squonk

I am not sure if it is irony, or destiny.

How much of Japan's population syndrome is directly assignable to Japan's unique policies, versus the nature of first world countries in general?

Japan's population has been essentially flat for the last 6 years: 127,773,000 in 2005, 127,817,000 in 2011. It is headed south as long as the birth rate remains so low. So no question that the rest of the world needs to understand the effects of negative population growth. A decreasing population will test many economic policies that relied on monotonically increasing population to be effective. I doubt we can predict all of the policies that will break.

I keep imagining the technology used with recreational vehicles. Spend a day as a tourist in Chicago. Hop in the RV and go to sleep. Wake up in Memphis. Visit Elvis, enjoy waffles & fried chicken, then hit the hay and wake up the next day in Orlando. No down time.

For 10 years I've been driving home from work in Silicon Valley thinking, "I am living in the future."

Data Points:

Since 1970, global population increased by 91% Since 1970, global aggregate GDP increased by 540% (in constant $)

I think that means that 540/1.91 = ~2.8x increase in per-person productivity on a global basis over the last 40 years. I would contend that capitalism drives productivity increases to a greater degree than communism or socialism, simply based on the fact that 8 of the top 10 economies in the world are arguably capitalist. (counting France as socialist and China as something else, not sure what at this point).

A better statistician than I can weigh in with wealth distribution, and I am betting that the average world citizen is better off today than 40 years ago, primarily due to capitalism.

Retail is not going away. It is evolving.

Big box stores killed the mom & pops. Online retailers killed the big box stores: Circuit City, Barnes & Noble, Borders, Blockbuster, Tower Records.

WalMart is right to be concerned.

Consumers benefit from online shopping: - Skip the ride to the store and back - Seemingly limitless selection in a few searches - Confidence in pricing by comparing

Brick & mortars need to do their homework and understand the psychology of shopping in an Internet world.

There will always be those who: - Want it right now - Enjoy the social interaction of shopping with friends - Want to talk to someone who knows what they are talking about - Want to be 'seen'

They need to wind down and market to that segment of the population. That is where they are headed anyway.

Facebook will apply the data from each account to the Turing Test. Start with a database of 67.5 years of e-mail, tweets, photos, voice mail, video mail, geo-location, blogs, purchase history, social networks, all from one person. Then add AI and a remote presence device, and we can all live on.

Maybe not a surprise, but definitely unexpected, was the number of systems where, over time, the incremental features had overtaken the original architecture, but the vendor would not fund a new implementation. I've seen 15 year-old systems that were so byzantine, every feature change broke two others, and attempts at improvement caused entropy. It was both a huge time sink and customer satisfaction debacle.

Here is an idea for CSCI 344: Identifying When to Throw that Shit Out

There are attributes of American society that enable the country to excel, and which have nothing to do with quality of public education. First, parents in general are less active in managing their kids' time than other countries. Kids have more leeway to determine what they do with their time. Many do slack off, or get into trouble, and sometimes it is serious. But many others find out what really interests them. They are not told they have to prepare to be a doctor, lawyer or engineer. They are more likely to be able to try everything and see where their mind returns to over and over. No cookie cutters or escalators.

Second, we have a different view of failure than many other nations. The relatively low social and legal consequence of failure allows Americans to stand back up, shake off the failure and try again. Think about how many restaurants there are and the number that will fail within a year or two. It is millions of failures annually. In Germany, for example, if a business does not notify its creditors 30 days before running out of cash, the president can go to prison. In the US, a business has no requirement to ever notify their creditors at all. We seem to see failure as a consequence of taking a risk, not as a scarlet letter. To never fail, is to never try.

If you combine the two, we have a society where people not only have a better opportunity to discover their passions, they feel much less encumbered by the prospect of failure than in other countries. Passion drives innovation, creativity, persistence and the competitive spirit. Can you imagine Apple, Microsoft, Walmart, Amazon, MacDonald's or any other 'huge success' without a passionate, risk-taking founder? Even Subway has such a story.

The product of our education system may not do as well on tests as their peers from other countries, but when they get into college and choose a major, they are more likely to be passionate and self-motivated and excel in their chosen curriculum.

Our educational system needs help, there is no doubt. Since my grade school days, funding for the arts has completely disappeared. Schools are run down to the point of being shameful. But the key ingredients that produce greatness are still there.

First, this is a message to middle school kids. It is a solid message: Determine what you love to do and give it all you have. It is true that what you achieve in that pursuit will be mitigated by your actual talent for it, life circumstances, responsibilities and resources, not to mention luck. But even if you can't make a living at it or even get to it very often, doing what you love for its own sake will make your life more satisfying than not.

True?

You need to call. Recruiters are verbal. Reading? Not so much.

There is some truth to this. I've been receiving 'delayed' notices on mail to aramco.com e-mail addresses for several days.