What better way to celebrate than with some gold-related trivia?

The ten billion ounces of gold in the world would fit into a cube roughly 25 meters (about 82 feet) on a side. If you could form such a cube by gathering every scrap of gold that man has ever mined into one place, you could only build about one-third of the Washington Monument. Total annual production of gold would most likely fit in your living room.

Ryan e-mailed me this link to Grand Shelters awhile back - they are a company that makes a tool you can use to built a strong and warm (relatively of course) igloo with just a few people and a few hours.

Does anyone have any experience with these? I saw that I can order it through REI, so worst case is it doesn’t work right and we’d return it.

Any feedback would be appreciated. Of course, if I go with it and we try it out, I’ll post a review promptly. In the meantime, how can anyone not love this stuff?

Don’t get me wrong folks, Plaxico Burress is a first class idiot. Although, I’m starting to question who the bigger idiot is. Plaxico may have harmed the lives of many, including his own by not following some of the most basic safety rules, and I’m not talking about the safety dance. But even more concerning, is the current dialogue that the media has presented us with this case. Let me give you a quote from AP article on the federal raid of Plaxico’s home.

A small cache of weapons and ammunition and the pants and sneakers that Plaxico Burress wore when he accidentally shot himself last month have been seized from the home of the New York Giants receiver, police said Wednesday.

Since when is two guns considered a cache?  Why is this surprising? Why does the media consistently use derogatory words such as “cache” to describe any ownership of weapons? Even more alarming, why has no one questioned federal authorities raiding Plaxico’s home?  Has the process of obtaining a search warrant become as easy as saying “Oh, judge, hes black, and shot himself with a handgun. He’s obviously got more shit we can nail him on.”

As I listen to people talk about this case, It scares me to realize that no one really cares about about the power that federal authorities are granted for “probable cause.”  Put your own delusional fear of guns  aside for just a moment and start asking yourself if you are ok with such vague and obscure evidence as enough reason for federal agents to enter your home with guns drawn.

If you are OK with our current system then you should have no problem with the following scenario. One afternoon you take out  your “Assault Vehicle”  for a spin and as you speed, you lose control and smash into a tree. You obviously broke the law. You obviously are an idiot. Because you are an idiot, and you committed a crime in the past, you are obviously committing more crimes and your house’s front door should be smashed in by authorities as your child screams in terror as the protector of the people ransack your belongings.

Why was this article’s focus on the weapons cache, and not about the affadavit given to the judge to obtain the search warrant? The article didn’t even tell us the crime his house was involved with!

Now that I have graduated college I have been blessed with the fantastic gift of a ginormous pile of debt.  Lately, this burden has brought me a large amount of anxiety and I’m almost positive it is actually interfering with my productive labor. It’s a strain on my own mental health to be constantly worrying about repayment.

For the past couple months I have been doing some thinking around a new type of investment vehicle. I’m calling it investment in human capital. I have to be honest in saying that I have done very little real research on this topic, and maybe some sort of derivative of this already exists. However, to my knowledge, I have never seen or heard of anything remotely close to what I am proposing, and for all I know, maybe for a very good reason.

So how would something like this work? What the hell does investment in human capital even mean?  I’m going to use myself as the “human capital” that will seek investment for this thought experiment. I’m going to further define  “investment in human capital” as the act of exchanging capital for a percentage of all potential productive wealth from labor in hopes of a greater return. In other words, if an investor believes that my lifetime productivity were to return[1] him a greater value of his initial investment, and I, the store of human capital, prefers capital now rather then later, we would both agree to such an exchange.

He [a consumer] buys because he believes that to acquire the merchandise in question will satisfy him better than keeping the money or spending it for something else.  -Mises. The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science p76

First of all, for me to be seeking such an exchange in the first place it means that my marginal willingness to pay for relief from debt now, rather then later will be higher. In fact, my real willingness to pay, would be a number well over the principle + interest of my current debt. My next step would to seek investment, much like a firm does for venture capital. I would literally give them my pitch. This would be a process of due diligence between the firm and myself. Since there is a significant amount of imperfect information prior to this meeting(s), this process of getting to know each other would be a an opportunity for the investing party to get a better idea of my character. Even with a simple set of facts, the investor could probably quickly come up with a term sheet. I could imagine simply plugging in some facts about my height, education, weight, birth place, and looks into a statistical model that could spit out the appropriate profit-making magic numbers. I would guess that even more prevalent would be the process where successful investors would mix in some of their own “secret sauce”. Like many companies, it’s not always a black and white process understanding which firm is going to give you a 10x return on your investment.  Some investors may simply just have a hunch! Depending on how risk averse the investor or firm is, they may believe that they know what sort of special characteristics in finding the individuals with highest return.

I think it is also important to realize these investments don’t have to be exclusively about debt recovery. Perhaps some individuals have, what they believe, the next huge business idea. Do not confuse an investment in human capital as the same function of a loan. They are two very different tools with two extremely different incentive structures. An investor in human capital would have long term fiduciary incentives to promote the success of the individual where a lender is only concerned about the return of his principal and interest. The objectives of both parties align in their own self interest. There is of course always the risk that the human capital takes a trip to Europe for a soul searching session and comes back to forever retire his labor and becomes a street performer. (Although I hear they do pretty well) It is also true that the individual does not have the urge to default, since his repayment is always a proportion of his income and he will face the same financial burden as the investor. Even with such aligned incentive structures problems may arise such as the most obvious, death. Like with all matters of uncertainty in trade, the market has provided signaling through the price system and produced products and services to account for such risk. Even more interesting then these differences in incentive structures is the difference in time horizons. When a self-employed entrepreneur seeks capital through debt financing, or venture capital, the focus is completely on the near term success of the company, not the individual. Although an individual may seek human capital investment for a particular business idea, the investor is much more concerned about the individuals long term success, and will probably be less interested in immediate success.

Lets say after a few months of talking to “SuccessStartsWithUs.com” they are ready to offer me a term sheet. During these months I gave them my school transcripts, my grandmas phone number, my favorite type of scotch, and my favorite dance move. I knew from the beginning that the process with this firm was going to be an arduous process, especially since this firms usually makes well informed decisions for “home run” investments. Sure, I could have gone for firms who have a 5min process, but I was willing to spend time and reveal a lot more of myself so they could get a better understanding of my potential life long value of labor. As the market usually provides choices for consumes, we could assume that various types of investments in human capital would take place.

Let us now imagine that the investment company or individual has offered me a term sheet of $77,334 in exchange for 1.234% of all my earned income until death. At this point it is difficult to say exactly how the exchange contract will look. My guess is that there would have to an extremely transparent payment with low overhead. There would need to be a system set up that would allow the human capital to pay his investors quickly and easily, or perhaps automatically. There also needs to be an efficient way for the investor to know that the human capital is not committing fraud by hiding income. I imagine that these services could free ride off the god awful service of the current IRS administration. My guess is that it would not suffice and entire services would arise to assist in lowering the costs of such transactions.

I know there will some of you screaming something absurd like “slavery!” or “feudalism” which only proves how ignorant you really are. I’m also certain there are a bunch of you moaning “Zomg! That is a rip off! $77,334 for 1.234% for life is a crime, and people would just take advantage of someone in an irrational state.” Shame on you. Just because it is a subjectively bad deal for you doesn’t mean it is for the person making the exchange. I don’t know whats more absurd, you, some white rich power-tripping bureaucrat looking out for the irrational, or you, the individual that gives 40% of your entire earned income while gleefully listening to all things considered talking about the next bailout. If you were so concerned for the poor, stop raping them and the generations to come before you start regulating exchange.

Again, let us remind ourselves.

In a game there are winners and losers. But a business deal is always advantageous for both parties. If both the buyer and the seller were not to consider the transaction as the most advantageous action they could choose under the prevailing conditions, they would not enter into the deal. -Mises.The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science p90

Buyers remorse happens to us all, but these things are always considered at purchase time. We act in order to lessen our displeasure. If we later find that we have miscalculated the magnitude of this outcome, or our own preferences change, it is invalid to suggest that the purchase was irrational. In making such arguments, we fail to recognize the opportunity cost of not acting. What was the next best alternative of not making the exchange. Buyers remorse has nothing to do with fraud. When you make an exchange, and someone commits a crime, the feeling of disappointment (anger, sadness, etc etc) is not buyers remorse. It’s a crime, and you are a victim.

[1] That “return” doesn’t have to come in the form of money, eg. altruism

As some of you may know, I work for a company who has a fetish for time (and should stay that way *wink). Life is a collection of memories, and a collection that validates our existence. A life. and for that matter death, without memories, would be like a book who has sat idle on a bookshelf for eternity.

There are moments in your day in which something triggers an important memory from the past. It usually catches you by surprise. The “events” that trigger these flashbacks range from a variety of different things. These flashes become even more interesting when the experience, you thought was unique, is also shared by others.

Whenever I hear a baseball announcer on the radio, I am immediately transformed to a very specific date and time in my life. I am immediately taken to my family room, with the now old fashion ‘wood burning fire place’ , burning from the latest old oak tree chopped down from my backyard. The sort of fireplace that takes at least a 10 minute effort to get started and always leaves the scent of burning wood throughout the house. Not some invisible gas you swear you can smell, or some log you have to unwrap. There is coffee being drunk, and another pot brewing in the 1980s model of the Coffee-Mate. (in other words, the same one you use today) The drip is distinct. High pitched and high velocity in the beginning and then finishing with an extremely loud and rude gurgling with steam condensing all over the wood cabinetry screaming to let you know that it has completed.

The doors were always open with the screen door closed to prevent any of the Oak leaves from actually blowing into the house. It was always that damned high step door in the family room that my mom would continually bicker about getting a three season porch for. To this day, thank god, there is still no three seasoned porch. Just one awkward door, and I am still wondering what the function of that door was, besides to let in the cold, October, Minnesota air in. In the background would be that same damn baseball announcer, I swear by it, announcing the Packers/Vikings football game. Even to this day, be it hockey, baseball, football, basketball, it’s same guy. He follows me everywhere I go year after year.

I couldn’t tell you one play or score from the thousands of games I witnessed in this settings. I do remember  my dad ironing his dress shirts for class the next morning as a the coffee table laid scattered with lessons plans, transparencies, and a sloppy pile of uncorrected essays. I remember when I was in high school and I would try to imagine the setting time and place that my teacher would be correcting my papers. I remember coming up with some of the wildest settings, visualizing them finally reaching my paper.

Most of our memories are triggered by some cue in our day to day life. Very few people record moments of their life, so they are left with the things in their environment that pulls up a fleeting memory sinking way down in the subconscious. The moments that are recorded, usually because of some perceived notion that we are expecting an experience that will offer to lessen our displeasure in the future, are often less “moving” then the unrecorded. For me, the most important memories  have no physical representation, but are triggered on their own from music, symbols, people, and periods, like before falling asleep. I don’t think it’s accurate to say that all recorded memories are less valuable then recorded ones, it’s just that to be diligent in the process of recording is downright costly to your well being.

I think that’s part of the reason why I frantically tried to save all of my schoolwork over the past years. Something to preserve the memory that never required me to do more work then I already did. I think why this fetish grew on me was from my last day of elementary school. Over the 5 years that I attended Castle Elementary in Oakdale MN, each year the teacher would pull writings, art, a whole hodgepodge of our work and were saving it in a file only to give back to us on our way out to middle school as 5th graders. To this day I remember looking at things in that folder and being shocked. Sure, the difference between writings and the funny artwork was interesting, but in all honesty I don’t think it was the materials themselves that were the most memorable of this moment. It was the collection of things that started sending us back to our past, our lunch breaks, spelling tests, Oregon trail, and first crushes. It may not sound like what 5th graders do, but I guarantee you, as every 5th grader peered through their folder they were thinking, “Crap, middle school.” Followed by a whole bunch of butterflies. Those folders did something to us, they brought us back, and then brought us BACK, and forced us to reflect about -now-. This is the overwhelming thing about memories. As much as they have to do with the past, they have everything to do with the present.

When Google maps first came out I was glued to the screen for hours. As everyone does, you immediately find your house. When you find it, you don’t sit there and say “There is a building. There is a road.” Seeing your house from the sky triggers something. And then you move to the backyard searching for the outline of your hockey rink. And then you move to the front yard where you played catch, and the street where you first rode your bike. Then you quickly navigate to your friends house and retrace the path you took to sneak out to friends’ houses. And then you find the Burger King, Wendys, and Taco bell you all met at when there was nothing else to do. Then you find your friends’ house where you met your first girlfriend, and drank your first drink. There is the school and there is the hockey rink where you got up at 4am before school to practice, and the parking lot where you parked your first car. You start zooming out and you become older. Minneapolis, St Paul, the Mall of America. Freedom. You stick close to the roads and cities you know, slowly moving out trying to recognize familiar vacations spots or friends’ cabins. It doesn’t even matter if you don’t know where something actually is on the map. You just move “north” on the map and all of a sudden you are at your friends cabin on the pontoon boat fishing for walleye. There is is Colorado, where you watched DMB at Red Rocks and Arizona where your first college roommate was from. There is southern California where you took that amazing spring break trip, with the amazing people in your life and wish from that day forward that you could go back. It’s just a dot, a black little dot that reads “Los Angeles”, it’s no where near where you actually vacationed, but it doesn’t matter.

There is something special about location. It hasn’t been used as a traditional recording medium until now. I also believe that it has a long way to go until people really recognize its importance to their own personal history. In my job I am constantly obsessing over how to better understand information including topics, and not to get all cliche on you, (although it’s far too late for that) but yourself. But why is understanding all of this information so important? Well, maybe it isn’t, but it’s not just about ALL of the information, it’s about taking all of that information and showing “what it all means”, the real underlying point of the whole story. At first, it sounds that no one would/should care but inflated egos. For me, It’s really not about uploading photos to Flickr, updating my status on Facebook or Twitter, blogging, where I was, on and on and on. The magic happens when you put these pieces together pinned downed by the only thing that keeps them together. Time.

Just how browsing a map triggers specific memories, putting these bits and pieces together in the context of time, causes neurons to fire like crazy. Here is the most interesting aspect. When you take a collection of these…lets say events, maybe it’s a visual representation of where you were, pictures you took, things you said, and people you were with… crazy things start to happen. No longer is it about the picture or the person you were with. The individual items fade away into the background, similar to how the ugly patterns in Magic Eye books would fall backwards as the 3d object was lifted from the pages. Nothing ‘on’ the page is in focus anymore, and nothing else ‘on’ the page matters. It all of a sudden becomes about one of the conversations you had with your friend. Or maybe you remember all the leafs that were on the ground that crunched as you were walking. You all of a sudden feel the anger or the happiness and remember exactly what caused it. Then you remember the cracks in the ground, and you start getting wrapped up in them. Why were they there, why were they so wide, how many people walked over them. You get angry, frustrated, and confused.

Something happens is all I know. It’s just a bunch of chemicals being released, who cares? I don’t know. Maybe that is all it is, just a bunch of chemicals being released. Just some mechanical neural response to stimulation. Regardless of what it is, I want to believe it is important. I want to believe that the retrieval of some of the things that have been left behind by the brain, for your own protection and sanity, have risen to benefit your future self in some sort of way. Just how seeing the school work from one year to the next helped me cope and prepare for the present and beyond.  It also doesn’t have to be overblown windbag of emotions. The same sort of self “learning” can occur when discovering anything. Showing a combination of the right events over time that has the ability to zoom in and out to the correct “scope” of the story. It is like recursion for the brain. You can pull way out, understand the bigger picture, and immediately start telescoping into the details, down to the second to get the richest story possible. It’s like a Hanoi tower problem. You sit there looking at the disks, and you get it, but you have no idea how to solve it. This analogy is a bit of a stretch…but bare with me. Lets say I am looking at the Hanoi towers in front of me, lets say graduation day. I see a picture that I took on graduation day. Great, I get it right? Now you know you need to move all the disks over one peg and there are a lot of complicated rules along the way. I know graduation was an important day for my present and future and there are a lot of complicated rules along the way. I look at the graduation picture and move in. I see status updates two hours before walking. I zoom in. Now I saw my location and more pictures. I may be satisfied and break out of further detail by then backing up, but backing up with new information to help tell the story of the one graduation photo I started at in the beginning. I could have potentially dropped down to the second layer, and I’m talking specificity here, as in seconds of the day. If you don’t understand the story/problem you make the problem/story as small/detailed as you need to start to understand.

So whats my point? I think there is much more work to be done when it comes to adding consumer value to location + technology. With the recent addition of GPS to the iPhone I think this is becoming more and more apparent. I have spent month after month, gadget after gadget, trying and testing every stupid Windows mobile app I could possibly put on my phone and haven’t been happy with any of them. No one ‘gets’ it yet. Location, as it is used today, is only a utility, and a poor one at that. Google has finally created social features, but it is limited and siloed from the rest of the world. There are in fact some people who have recognized the potential of location such as Y! Fire Eagle. Although most consumers and critics don’t really understand the point of this “distribution platform,” it’s importance will depend on the network effect which is now becoming a realization with self aware applications.

Something missing altogether is the ability to understand location over time. Sure, you can trace you path with polygons on a map, but this is a lie! Your location is not some continuous path at some constant rate. It actually has nothing to do with time and it is completely misleading. Why is this important? Lets say you take a road trip to Yosemite with your friends. You’re on the freeway and Freddy has to take a number two really bad and there is no bathroom in site for miles. You pull over along side the road so he can do his business while everyone else is laughing hysterically. Then out of no where a police car puts on his lights to investigate what the hell is going on. Finally, thirty minutes later you are back on the road. Now when you look at the path overlay on a map like it is traditionally displayed, you miss an entire axis of information. The whole pooping story gets erased all together, what a shame! How do you visually display in an intelligent way on a 2d map the axis of time. I think some

Tufte’s need to put their heads together to solve this problem in an elegant manner. Besides extremely ugly and inefficient method of annotating timestamps in popups with kml, I haven’t seen it done well anywhere. One interesting way, although still not ideal, was Dipity’s Tickr mashup. By separating the time/location axis into separate window panes one could understand the location story much better through the movement of time. As you flip through time, the associated location lights up, and as you keep moving froward in time you can begin to piece together your location in its complete context. There is no way to consume the information statically which brings us back to where we started. If anyone has some good examples of this being done, please share!

The location revolution is coming.

Lew Rockwell interviews Naomi Wolf

I think its important to keep the half-full attitude alive through the rest of this year. I love finding or being reminded of the little things when I’m not getting parking tickets, repairing car, or losing credit cars. Some of them this week:

Although I have a <3/hate relationship with ol’ Milton, I cherish his ink. What [econ] nerd wouldn’t?

2. My acceptance for my Small Miner’s claim was just accepted and it was nice to see this in my mailbox. Good thing they were not using it for private use!

3. I saw this building with furniture trying to escape. It was awesome. (click to see more)

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