I could hardly put the book Freakonomics down once I started reading it. Over the past few years I have been finding a lot of enjoyment while reading social science books that explore & challenge contemporary norms.

In this book we are shown some hidden motivations with real-estate agents. We are shown how crafty analysis can catch teachers who manipulate standardized testing to prop-up their class’s grades. We get to delve deep into the world of drug dealing gangs and learn why most drug dealers still live with their moms.

We hear a provocative case made for the social impacts on abortion and how it affects society’s crime rates. A case is made how the change in abortion laws 20 years ago with Row v. Wade has dramatically changed current criminal activity.

Most timely for me, a few chapters on what makes a good parent and an analysis on what things matter when you’re a parent verse being obsessive compulsive about raising the perfect child.

When I completed reading this book I headed on over to the Freakonomics Blog where in short quick form the authors of this book run with a variety of other topics.

From a marketing standpoint I really like how they have incorporated their Blog around promoting the book. The sales pitch is not in-your-face or obnoxious and I would think any loyal readers of theirs would be interested in buying the book. The authors have gone out of their way to write so much content that as a reader you can get a good feeling for what’s expected when you buy the book.

I have a must read for entrepreneurs and those who like books on what happens at the executive / board room level in billion dollar corporations called “Dead Bank Walking“.

Before I go into detail about this book I will note that I had never heard of Dead Bank Walking and it was not on my 2007 reading list. I found out about it when my wife and I took a few days off back in February to visit Central California and relax at a Bed & Breakfast.

This particular Bed & Breakfast we stayed at had a private guest house where we shared a common living area with another couple. During our visit it was raining quite a bit so we got to spend sometime getting to know the couple and as it turned out it was with Mr. Robert H. Smith, Former Chairman and CEO of Security Pacific Corporation.

For those who don’t know, Mr. Smith orchestrated the largest banking merger of its day; the merging of Security Pacific and Bank of America. About a week after our mini vacation, I received a FedEx package from Mr. Smith with a signed copy of “Dead Bank Walking”, a book he wrote recapping the events. I immediately placed this book on top of the 20 other books sitting on my nightstand to read next.

Starting off the book we are privy to conversations Mr. Smith had with a who’s who of names such as Warren Buffett, Donald Trump & Allen Greenspan. During the 80’s it seemed anybody who was involved in large real estate developments came to Security Pacific and met with Smith. This also included the likes of Charles Keating, who you may recall as the guy who caused the whole Savings & Loan scandal with Lincoln Savings.

We learn that Smith assisted Keating in acquiring Lincon Savings which then “triggered a chain reaction of legislation, regulatory crackdowns, and economic difficulties”.

At the time Smith took over as CEO of Security Pacific, the government cracked down on lending institutions such as Security Pacific and forced the banks to revalue all their real estate loans.

Basically, banks such as Security Pacific loaned money to developers such as Donald Trump based on the future values the properties would be worth upon completed development but due to the whole debacle with Charles Keating and folks like him who exploited loopholes in the law, the government was forced to crack down and institute a policy where all loans were no longer valued on their future valuations after development but marked at what one would get if they had to sell today.

Thus leaving Mr. Smith with a bank whose loan values on paper dwindled to a small percentage of what it was. At this same time (early 1990’s) California fell into a big recession thus causing other areas of the bank to bleed money left right and center.

Mr. Smith basically was handed the role of CEO of a bank that was heading down a path of despair. In addition to the government enforcing new laws on how banks value their real estate loans, it turned out one of Security Pacific’s big money making operations had inadvertently broken another law thus exposing themselves to a possible fine that could have toped over a billion dollars.

Mr. Smith recounts dozens of stories how under his command anything that could have gone wrong went wrong.

During the peak of crisis, Smith decides the best solution for the bank was to merge his bank with a larger institution. Two banks who became likely candidates were Wells Fargo & Bank of America.

What appeared to me as unbelievable determination & overcoming crisis and stress I could never imagine, Mr. Smith manages his way and overcomes everything that came their way.

As a reader we are taken into the boardrooms where seasoned banking executive face off and battle each other over numbers. We are taken into the executive offices where we get to hear the conversations over the largest banking merger to ever take place. We get to peak into the world of high finance and see for a moment what business is like at the highest levels of corporate banking.

Upon reading the book I placed a call to Mr. Smith. I mentioned how I was blown away with what seemed like unbelievable obstacles and how he overcame them. I said “You would think at some point you would just throw your hands up and say, screw it, I am out of here.

Smith mentioned to me that one of the main reasons for writing the book was to show how you can never give up and that you keep fighting even when things seem impossible. He also mentioned that there is a bit of luck with things and they got that bit of luck.

I mention entrepreneurs would like this book because while reading it you become privy to issues that seem impossible to overcome. But under the leadership of Bob Smith, he not only manages to clean up the mess that was thrown upon his bank due to new regulations and management oversights but he manages to merge his dieing bank for a tidy profit for its shareholders.

As an entrepreneur I read this book and could not believe how much stress one person could manage and overcome. If there is one thing I took from this book, it was to not let every detail overwhelm you. All you can do is to manage what is in front of you and deal with the facts as they come. Do not assume too much and do not get over emotional. All issues have a way of being resolved and it’s a matter of handling crisis’s one step at a time.

There are only a few books that when finished reading I think to myself “Shit, why did I not read this ten years ago?” I happen to just finish reading one of these types of books; The Millionaire Mind, Thomas J. Stanley, Ph.D.

Part of being an Obsessive Compulsive Entrepreneur is that my career path is far from normal. My days are typically filled with uncertainty. (more…)

If you have ever asked yourself why some ideas take off and spread virally while other ideas, especially those of your own seem to just flop flat on its face, this is a post for you to read.

You and I are not that different. I want to be healthy, successful, loved by my family and respected by my peers. I want to be able to buy what ever I want (within reason) and not worry each month about debt. I want to grow as a person and enjoy life for all it has to offer.

(more…)

This is for those of us with a twisted sense of humor.

There are certain things being worked on in this world that could have dramatic significant importance for our future and I think every educated person should at least have an understanding of it.

In this post I plan to discuss the ideas behind one of the hottest topics being debated in physics for the past 30 years, String Theory. I plan to explain it in the most elementary way I know how including an explanation of one of the theories off shoots, the concepts of multiple dimensions.

String Theory or Super String Theory as some people like to call it is by no means an easy topic to understand and the math supporting it is only really understood by a handful of the smartest brains in the world. Unfortunately the author of this post is not one of them but luckily for us the concepts behind the theory can be understood without having to know mathematics.

Before I begin and go on to explain String Theory I should point out that ideas like the Big Bang Theory are concepts that have not yet been proven. The physicist’s working on these large concept ideas hopes to one day prove the theories so it is important to understand that for as popular an idea these are, things like the Big Bang Theory and String Theory are just grandiose ideas thought up by some very smart people.

In Time Magazines The Unraveling of String Theory they explain the concept of String Theory as

There were good reasons for the theory’s appeal when it first emerged in the late 1970s and early ’80s. At the time, physicists found themselves facing a crisis: the two most important ideas of 20th century physics, relativity and quantum theory, were known to be fundamentally incompatible. Quantum theory describes the universe as intrinsically discontinuous: energy, for example, can come in bits just so small, but no smaller. Relativity treats time and space and gravity as a smooth, unbroken continuum. Each theory has its purposes, and they usually don’t overlap. But when dealing with very large masses or time periods that are infinitesimally small, like the core of a black hole or the first moments after the Big Bang, neither quite works.

The above explanation is good but I believe I can simplify String Theory by saying that we have mathematics that can explain thing which is large in the universe. Large things can be anything that is not at the atomic level. We use these types of mathematics every day from shooting astronauts into space to calculating the size and weight of just about everything.

We also have another type of mathematics that explains things which are extremely small. Things on the atomic level are as small as the universe is large. We call the smallest of smalls at the atomic level the quantum level or quantum mechanics.

Now having an understanding that we have a mathematical framework for all things large and one for all things small we realize that that when thinking about other big concepts such as the Big Bang, where the mass is infinitesimally large but the time frame and size are infinitesimally small all our underlying mathematical frameworks break down.

String Theory, or as others like to call it “The Theory of Everything” tries to create some underlying mathematics that is one level smaller then the Quantum level and the Relativity level which could tie the two together.

If these two theories were tapestries the little dots on the smallest level is what string theory would be trying to explain.

Over the past 30 years some of the smartest brains in the world have flocked towards studying String Theory and the mathematics behind it is showing concepts you would only expect to see from Star Trek episodes.

One such concept found when unveiling String Theory is the idea behind multiple dimensions. The concept of higher dimensions beyond the 3^rd (which we are used to) in itself is extremely difficult to grasp. The fact is, very few people can truly understand or vision the ideas behind another dimension apart from our own because the human mind is not equipped to handle such thought.

I’ve heard a handful of scientists try to explain the concepts behind dimensions and I found Carl Sagan in his 13 hour long series Cosmos explain it the best.

In his first example Sagan uses little packets of sugar that you can find on a restaurants coffee table next to the condiments. Sagan goes on to lay several sugar packets flat out on table and explains that the packets represent the human species and the table is a represent of the world the sugar packets occupy.

This is a two dimensional world and you can imagine the sugar packets are able to move right left, forward and backwards. They are not able to move up and down.

Let’s just say you were a sugar packet and you stood before all the other sugar packets to explain to the crowd that there is something more to life then going right, left, forward and backwards. You explain that there is also an up and down. The fact is, none of the other ‘regular’ sugar packets would get this concept as it is impossible for them to grasp.

In the sugar packet world things are only two dimensional and understanding yet let alone visioning a third dimension is beyond their comprehension.

Another example of explaining the concepts of understanding a higher dimension is the use of drawing a 3d square on a piece of paper. When we were all in grade school we learned how to draw a 3d box. When looking at the 3d mockup on paper the model looks really nothing like having a real 3d box sitting in front of you. When drawn, the 3d square has been converted to 2d and the image is shown flat with distorted lines representing the real 3d model to the best of our ability.

Going back to our sugar packet world, you can see that these people would have no problem drawing a 2d model of a three dimensional square but they would never be able to create or see an actual 3d square as their physical universe prohibits it.

For years now that mathematics coming out of the ideas from String Theory are showing we live in a world that has 10, 11 or even 26 dimensions. Perhaps our brains can conceptualize 4d, based on a 3d model but how can we possibly conceive a world with 9 dimensions or 20 dimensions?

If you find this topic interesting and would like to learn more I highly recommend watching The Elegant Universe by Brian Green. It’s a 3 part Nova series that does an amazing job explaining many of the concepts I briefly mentioned here.

I was asked a few months ago what could possibly come of all these smart physicists spending their time studying things such as these theories of everything. I explained that at one time studying ideas on the quantum level were unknown and no one really knew where that science would go.

We can thank those physicists back in the 1920’s for their ground breaking achievements in quantum physics as this led to the evolution of the electronic circuit which in turn is allowing you to read this post.

Last weeks trip to the Search Engine Strategies conference was quite the trip. For those who don’t attend these events I must ask, why don’t you?

Team WebGuerrilla flew into San Jose on Sunday starting the trip off by grouping with the Webmaster Radio Crew in the bar along with a few folks I met last April in New York.

From there it was non stop networking with amazing people. Imagine a large group of people who are obsessed about the same things you are but with drinks in hand. That’s SES. Sure, the sessions are amazing and I always learn a few things from each one I attend but the real excitement is the after hours.

I’ve gone to dozens of conventions over the past 10 years but nothing can stand up to the folks who make up the Search Engine community. You can feel the energy around the convention center as the white hats mingle among the black hats.

If you have not gone to one of these events and are working in the community I suggest you just attend. This was only my second event and I have already made a few friends for life.

New pictures added…

Picture credits go to:

Greg Hartnett, Shoemoney, Marcus, ChrisC and Barry Schwartz

Sunday I will be heading out to SES in San Jose and will be there all week. I am sure you will find me hanging out in the bars with WebGuerrilla, Dax and the Oilman so please feel free to come up and introduce yourself to me.

I am looking forward to catching up with all the new friends I met in New York. Oh, if there are any underground poker games taking place count me in!

It appears the 15 years olds in Nigeria have some new competition!

(Update 7/16/06: This email appears to have originated from 193.219.226.18, Lagos, Nigeria)

Hello,

My name is Mr.Chu Chan a citizen of North Korea; I would like you to guide me through the most viable investment opportunities in your Country. Alternatively, I can invest in your line of business perhaps if it?s viable. I am one of the defectors from North Korea and I am currently residing(Refugee Camp) in Vietnam.

I have been in this country for sometime after defecting from the North, I was into currency exchange business and I was always travelling to other parts of Asia, Europe and North America during that period, I was able to move out my funds and deposit it in a financial institution overseas.

I want to invest this funds in your country with your help and advice because we are being treated as foreigners here and watched closely because the Korean government believe we are security treat, A lot of defectors now go on to Canada or the United States and some parts of Europe to live. For more details, please see the following websites;

http://www.detnews.com/2003/nation/0310/09/a19e-292811.htm

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A41966-2003Oct3?language=printer

http://www.iht.com/articles/531755.html

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1181380/posts

I want you to send me a complete breakdown of the investment opportunities in your country and also let me know what exactly I need to do to enable you invest the funds for me in your country.

If interested, I will then come over to your country after you receive the funds and work out the investment plans with you. After I hear from you and find out the best investment business you can introduce to me, I will tell you how much is involved. I will expect your response together with your contact details.

Reply as soon as possible. (chuchan_15@yahoo.com.vn).

Regards and God Bless.
Mr. Chu Chan.

This morning I woke up feeling a bit guilty about neglecting the books that have been piling up on my nightstand. So I decided to take the whole day off and only read.

I chose Slaughter-House-Five by Kurt Vonnegut and being this is the first Vonnegut book I have ever read I can see why he is such a respected writer.

A friend of mine gave me this book as a gift because over the past few years I had taken an interest in WWII and read “Rise and Fall of Third Reich”. In addition to this I had also become interest in Quantum Physics, String Theory and the ideas of multiple dimensions.

My friend knowing me so well said I must read Vonnegut’s Slaughter-House as it touches upon all these topics.

Vonnegut’s ability to share some of his experiences from being a German prisoner of war through the eyes of Billy Pilgrim and at the same time giving the reader a sense of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder through the use of time travel is remarkable. (I hope that’s the message)

On a more personal note, my grandfather was a young 20 year old tank commander for the British Army in North Africa before he was taken captive by the German Panzer division headed by Rommel and sentenced to 3 years as a Prisoner of War. These events were depicted in the opening scenes of the 1970’s movie ‘Patton’.

I honestly can’t comprehend how these young soldiers were able to survive those horrid conditions in the POW camps. I have so much respect for my grandfather’s generation. Touching upon this topic I have “The Greatest Generation” on my to-read list.