Planetary Exploration: Living Room Addition

The other evening, I had the notion to take a picture (with my Atrix 2's camera) of one of our cats hiding underneath the couch. While doing so, I flipped my camera's setting to take a negative image and turned on the "flash". While doing so, it dawned upon me that underneath the couch looks like another planet at that setting. Dust settling down within the focal point looked like snowfall. That gave me an idea to stage some rocks to see what I could come up with. (And yes, you can thank a good case of ADHD for what you'll see.)

The secret to this was to stage a few rocks, shoot it with a negative "exposure" effect and then touch up the image with Pixlr Express for added realism (or to create a fantasy scene.) All of this was done from my phone (except the first and last two, where I added some additional touches on my laptop.) What you'll notice with the result of using the negative exposure effect, is that your brain's interpretation of the image is thrown out the window. You don't immediately recognize that you're looking at fibers in the carpet, for instance. I'm not going to pretend that there isn't a fake feeling to some of these, but would you suspect they're taken on a living room floor? You be the judge. At first glance, they can look rather convincing.

On this first one, I simply laid some stones that I'd collected on a hiking trip in Colorado, as if they were two pieces of a puzzle. After some experimentation, I placed another couple of pieces in front to give it a sense of scale and depth. Afterwards, I cropped the photo,  removed the "anti-shadows" (the negative of the shadows cast by the flash) with a clone tool (on my laptop) added a sunlight style effect in Pixlr, and I was done. The end result reminded me of a boulder near a beach you might find out in the Pacific Ocean somewhere.

Beach Boulder

These next three were taken with some dust-like material. It was my attempt to mimic something you'd see from a space probe visiting Mars. The material I used was some left over Grancrete (a concrete substitute), that I've had for nearly a decade, sprinkled upon a tile where I created a small crater. Over the years, moisture exposure has caused some pieces to clump together and gave it a look as if small, dusty rocks were thrown in.

Martian Crater 1

Martian Crater 2

Mars Lander Landscape

Of course, if you're going to have a probe on Mars, why not have it take a shot of some rocks nearby? So here I went back to the rocks used in my first photo, added in some blowing dust and sun glare with Pixlr, and here's the result.

Martian Rock Field

Next we have the same rocks, rearranged into a couple of plateaus. For the starry background, there was an overlay feature in Pixlr that I used. That required me to edit this on my laptop, however, as stars appeared across the entire photo.

Extrasolar Planet? 

Finally, here's one using the same technique as with the other rock shots. I stitched the rocks with a smudge tool, and added some artificial light. What I found unique in this was the look of dust rolling across the top of the plateau stone. This was an artifact from the "anti-shadow". I decided to leave that in since it made it look like dust, or some kind of vapor was rolling off the top. 

Plateau

Not bad for something considering it was created underneath my couch, now only if I had some dry ice... Read More!

Explanation for the Mercury "UFO"

Alright, a YouTube video popped up showing what purportedly is a UFO using cloaking technology tagging along the planet Mercury.

Take a look:


Now, before you stock up on Armageddon day supplies of a pending alien attack, fear not, I have an explanation of what I think this is.


NOTE: Since my original writing this blog, I have continued my quest to get to the bottom of this and refine my thoughts. You can read all of this, or simply skip to the bottom, for the real answer to what is going on.

The first thing that came to my mind was Mercury's magnetosphere. If you've seen simulations of earth's magnetosphere, you'll recognize the tale-tale signature of what a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) or solar flare looks like when it hits Earth's magnetosphere. If you watch the video there is a nice gap between the bright CME impact zone and the planet. It's pretty darn locked on.

EDIT: I also labeled the area that has already been explained by the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL)Here you'll notice the darkened band, which is the previous state of where Mercury was, and the light glint you see just above it. (You can still see the background stars are added back to the image.) You'll notice that the darkened band stretches back only so far, leaving behind the intense light. I would imagine if the correction time period was shortened, then the darkened band would be narrower, and more of the aurora would be visible.

Before I jumped to this conclusion, I did a little research, to first find out where the inner planets are currently located in their orbit, and a little about the satellite (named STEREO). So, I found this link, and made the graph below, adding STEREO to it based on it's likely position given by the fact that it's roughly within the same ellipse as Earth (though it doesn't orbit Earth) and the angle of Mercury and it's trajectory within the video. Now, you'll note that SECCHI is the label that I used for the satellite, which I got from the YouTube video. SECCHI is just the name of the instrument on the satellite. It was after making this graphic, that I learned about STEREO's name.

As it turns out, all you need to do is visit this page, and it confirmed my guess of it's position.

Now, I know what you're thinking, how can I be so sure? Well, I asked the same thing myself. Questions like, does Mercury even have a magnetosphere? The answer to that is.... yes. OK, then what does it look like? Check out this drawing provided by our good friends at NASA:

Essentially, this is just one heck of an Aurora. What we are seeing is the area that is aptly labelled the "bow shock". If this phenomenon doesn't have a name already, it ought to be called a Mercurial Equatorial Aurora, or Mercurial Aurora or something like that.

So, there you go, that's my quick explanation as to what we're seeing here. Of course I should give the disclaimer, I'm not a NASA scientist or anything like that, but, just your average Joe who likes to read about it once in awhile.

FINAL EDIT...
Well, after doing some more image analysis, I have conceded that the explanation given by the NRL is indeed correct. It is merely an artifact of the image subtraction (which doesn't go far enough to cover it's previous day's track.) Looking back, the problem with the YouYube Animation is that it only shows one day. In fact, if you check out the actual archives you can see that each day's images are grouped. So, I did something to prove the NRL explanation, and put together a two day animation here:

Taking a closer look at the images, and the previous day's track, the first smudge of Mercury starts to appear after 12 hours. So, if you can imagine there is a program that automates this process and falls short just a bit. What needs to happen is they need to add another 12 hours worth of frame subtraction. It's the kind of thing that I'm sure they run in circles trying to tweak. I've labeled the first 5 or 6 frames of each of the days in the two day animation. You can see that the image artifact matches the speed of the background stars, rather than the planet. If this doesn't satisfy you, you can always looks through any day of the archive, and watch the UFO, Aurora, image artifact appear at the end of each day.
So, there you have it. Was that a waste of time? Well, maybe. At least now it is explained without question or further doubts. On the sunny side, we all learned more about our solar system, and about image processing, which goes well beyond your average textbook explanation, huh?

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Advertising on Facebook

Have you ever wondered about the effectiveness of Facebook ads? Well, I was curious, and wanted to drive some more traffic to my business page, so I gave it a shot. Read on, and I'll tell you what I've discovered.

First, if you know me at all, you know sometimes I like to just dive into things. (If you didn't know that before... well, now you know!) I don't always get my feet wet to test the waters, and sometimes, I let my impulsiveness get the best of me. I applied the same thing to running my first set of ads on Facebook. Quite frankly, I think most people.... a good percent of people... there might be some others that would have a similar approach. I mean what is there to loose, right? At most we're talking about spending 50-75 cents per click. That's not going to break the bank or anything, right? I would hope not.

Anyways, I own a small landscaping business, and I decided to select my target market: anyone living within 25 miles of a preferred city, for anyone over the age of 27. Right away, the Facebook Ads app, calculates the size of your potential market. I figure, the more, the merrier. So long as the target audience lives in the area that I serve, and is old enough to (likely) own a house with enough money to spend on landscaping, that should be fine. They do provide a place to limit your audience by education attainment, interests, gender, relationship status, and even sexual orientation/preference. Not wanting to limit myself there, I left those empty. If there was a spot for household income, and home ownership, that would be perfect, but since that isn't exactly a statistic that people want to share within their social group, I suppose I'm out of luck on that. Ideally, I would have chosen college grads only, but I didn't want to exclude people that either never went to college, or perhaps, just didn't place that info into their profile. You don't have the choice to select more than one option, as you can only choose high school, college student, or college grad or no preference. So, for that situation I let my age bracket selection be the driver there. My thoughts were to put the ad in front of as many relevant people as possible, and I'll let the audience decide if they are interested. If they are interested and they decide to click, then I'm good to go. If not, that's OK too. All I had to do then was make sure my ad had a neat looking picture, some good catchy wording (which included my phone number), set my pricing point and presto!... I was set.

So, with a simple click of the mouse on a Friday afternoon, I was in business running my first ad. Less than 5 minutes later, I got a phone call. I was impressed, and gleefully answered the phone. As it turns out, it was indeed someone who wanted my services, but, as it turned out, that fella found me on Google (where I am not currently advertising.) So, after the conversation, I looked up to view the ad performance page and I really liked what I saw. My ad had already been seen by thousands of viewers and placed thousands of times. To top that off, I was getting some clicks and, even better, a new fan who "liked" my page! I couldn't have been more pleased. Suddenly, my business was getting more attention than it probably ever had gotten before. After the first hour or so, I trustingly let Facebook do its thing. Later that evening, I checked, and I saw numbers in the tens of thousands, with several more clicks. I went to bed that evening thinking that this was the best move that I've made yet in all of the marketing that I've done. Even if not one person clicks, I'm still getting the attention of thousands of people! Genius! Right?

Waking up the next morning, I had to check the progress. A few more clicks, and the ad was still being seen by people, but just a few hundred (rather than the thousands) had seen it since midnight Pacific time (when the daily counter resets). "Not bad," I thought. After all, it was only morning. I mean, other than an ad-crazed man, who checks Facebook that early on a Saturday morning? I went on about my day, and left to go take care of the service the caller from the previous afternoon had requested. As I traveled to my job of the day, I couldn't help but wonder who all might call. After putting in a 6 hours of solid hard work, I wrapped up my job, and headed home. After a quick check, I was very disappointed. At best, only a few dozen people had seen my ad since the morning began. No wonder my phone hadn't been ringing off the hook. What gives? I wasn't sure. On Sunday, activity seemed to pick up, and I was OK with that. I figure that after an initial burst of attention, a slow-but-steady approach was not a bad way to go. Besides, I didn't want to spend all of my allocated money in just one or two days.

As my first week progressed, I let things be for the most part. At some point during the week, I updated my business page some, hoping to convert more clicks into "likes". Sometime around mid-week, I decided to try something different. Instead of tweaking my first ad, I simply added another to see what might get the most attention. After adding my new ad, I received a disturbing notice: my ad wasn't being run and I had a message attached to it suggesting that I need to either become more creative, increase my spending limit, or fine-tune my audience. Surely, I didn't need to make a more creative ad. My first ad seemed to do just fine, why would a slightly tweaked ad not be good enough for Facebook to run it? That didn't make sense, so I sent in a request for help. I got an automatic response some time later saying that a real person would review my case, and respond sometime in the next couple of business days. Fine, I'll wait, right? Well, not exactly. I decided to take things into my own hands and push my ad, rather than wait for a response. After giving it some thought, I raised my bid price some. Nothing. So, I raised my daily spend cap. I figure with two ads, I need to increase that some. Lo-and-behold, both ads were working after that change. Conveniently, I received a human response from Facebook (well, as far as I know, this guy was human), saying that my ad looked fine, and that it should be working. Well, of course it was, I'd fixed it. I didn't really need them to help me in the first place, I've got this figured out now, but thanks anyways.

As the first week drew to a close, I was pleased by my ad campaign. I hadn't brought in any new business, but at least I was getting people looking to notice that I exist. Given the time of the year (it was mid-November), you can't expect everyone to want new landscaping designs or services. On Sunday, our church did something unique: it gave away money to all who attended. The purpose was for us to take that money, somehow invest it or grow it, and then return and give it back. They did the same last year, with some people baking cookies, making lemonade, or performing gift wrapping services. It's a great idea, and I knew exactly what I could do: plant flowers. I could have my wife join me, and whoever wanted to spruce-up their home with flowers, we could do that. Later that afternoon, it hit me: I'm going to place some Facebook ads and create some awareness to what we are doing. The newly created ad was launched, and the response was unbelievable. Nearly twice the people had seen my ad (compared to the first night with my business ad), and clicks were coming in left and right. It was great. I thought, "you know, I've done the right thing here, I should have some phone calls in the morning." As the morning came, I was in shock. At the stroke of midnight, Pacific Time, my ad was virtually shut down. My ad had only been seen by one person! Take a look at the screen shot below and you can see the results.

Taking a look at that, you can see source of my frustration. Questions started rolling through my mind: Was this some discrimination against my Christmas themed ad? If that is true, how could they do such a thing? Was my daily spend cap set too low? What gives? What have I done to deserve this? Frustration. I took a screen shot, and sent it in. Unfortunately, I haven't received a response from the ad team. Either they're busy, or maybe I missed the responding email in my junk box, I'm not sure. Whatever the case might be, I knew one thing: my ad needed to return to its former glory. I decided to create another new campaign, with the hopes of catching that "beginners luck" that I seemed to have been struck with, not once, but twice. The third time around, a new campaign wasn't bringing in the same results. Now, I was stuck. Still no response to my email and my hope was dwindling. Then, I started searching online for Facebook ad problems. It seemed like I wasn't the only one with the problem. One suggestion that came to mind that my ad wasn't running with as high of a frequency because it wasn't getting a high enough click-through-rate on previous runs. Then, that's when it dawned upon me: I'm competing against all of these other ads out there. If Facebook is smart, and you know they are, then they're going to place a focus on the ads that make them the most money. They want people to click on your ads, and if people aren't clicking on it enough compared to other ads, then it'll run second (or third) fiddle to those "better" ads. It's not that my ad was bad, looked ugly, or lacked creativity, it's just the fact that a lower percent of people are going to click on it compared to other ads. Why is this? Because I'm a landscaper. Compared to a credit card, or a smartphone, not as many people are interested in landscaping. Just on the surface, not all of my targeted audience owns a home. Right there, I have a smaller percent of my selected audience than compared to an Android smartphone. Next, more people are likely to have an interest to click on a smartphone ad, rather than for some flowers. Give that some thought: not all homeowners want to pay someone to plant flowers for them. So, what can I do? I'll start by fine-tuning my audience right? It makes sense. You limit your audience, so to increase your click-through-rate. Then after some time, when Facebook detects that my ad is more effective, they'll run it more often. But, wait, there was still one more option, I can pay per each 1000 views. Hmm, that makes sense. Now I can buy views, rather than clicks. Suddenly, like a flip of a switch, I'm getting hits. Within minutes, I've blown through $5 on ads. Suddenly, an ad that hadn't seen action all day has over 8 thousand views. That was nice. But then, I've only gotten 3 clicks. That means that I'm paying $1.67 a click, or roughly twice what I was paying when my ad was being run through the first few hours of the pay-per-click rate. Unfortunately, after the initial burst of activity, things dropped off a cliff. Literally, the ad stopped running again. Then, I noticed one thing: my ad, which is set to run for 30 days, has a lifetime budget for $150 dollars. I've just busted though 1/30th of my budget. So, it makes sense that it would stop running. Facebook wants to make sure my ad runs through the duration of the campaign, while at the same time keep things within my set budget. So, there you have it. After a week and 2 days of experimenting, I seemed to have figured out what it takes to run a successful ad on Facebook. I'll keep you updated when I get more results in, but for now, I'm calling it a night!

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Why Politics Should be Removed from the US Deficit (and Surplus) Policy

Over the last few weeks, we have all witnessed the train wreck that has culminated from all of the bickering going on in D.C. which ultimately ended in the US credit downgrade for the first time in history (at least since our recognition of this standard.) Now, about the only certainty going on in the aftermath is that there will be days, weeks... OK, years where we'll be hearing about who to blame this fiasco on. Take your pick: Democrats in the Senate, Republicans in the House, Tea Party folks, the President himself, and even the S&P itself (because there are those who think the downgrade was unfair.) Personally, I think all of the above have contributed in wreaking havoc, except the S&P. On that note, claiming the S&P downgrade as being unfair, is about like getting mad at your neighbors for calling 9-1-1 when your house is on fire. Moreover, placing blame now is about like wondering who started the fire or how it started, when what you really need to be doing is evacuating from a burning building. If the truth be told, the fire started long before this 112th Congress came into session. What they were arguing about wasn't that there was a fire, but how to pull the fire extinguisher pin and where to aim it. Now that they've failed to do that, let's run out of this burning building, catch our breath, and discuss where to go from here.


Despite where you put the blame, I think at this point we can all agree that the situation that we're in is a train wreck, and it is likely going to take quite a bit of time before we can solve this problem. Much like the ongoing problems that we face, nearly 4 years after the start of the recent economic troubles, it took a long time to get to where we are at, and it will take us some time to get us out. To make an analogy, we discovered that building houses on the slope of an active economic volcano, just wasn't a great idea. Thankfully, I think for the most part we were able to see this problem, take some recommendations from economic experts, and we've made some corrective adjustments. Time will tell how the ultimate outcome of these decisions will be. But, as it stands, I think most of us can agree that pulling back on reckless lending will help us overcome this problem.

Now today, what we face is a much bigger problem. I can say that my entire lifetime has been eclipsed by deficit spending. The couple of years in the late 90's where we had a "surplus" was just a mere blip on the radar. A lot of today's problems can be rooted in Keynesian economics. Perhaps, more aptly, I would say our problems lies within the misapplication of Keynesian economics within our federal government. I am personally a proponent of the theory behind the policy. I do believe it has been given a bad name, however, due to it's misapplication.

Keynesian economics is like this: Imagine a child wanting you to walk her to a park with a swing set, and in this case, you agree to go. Now, once there, she spots the swing set and runs over towards it, and hops on. As she swings, she has no problem getting things started on her own. Now, with the desire to go a little higher, and faster, she asks for a "push" so you agree and stand behind her at that perfect distance from the midpoint withe the perfect timing, and give her the correct amount of force.

Now, pause this scene in your mind for a moment. Imagine if you had stood closer to the midpoint. If you stood too close, it becomes increasingly difficult to push her back. In addition to that, although you can reach her, she is not in a position that is optimum to where your arms reach her back. Likewise, if you stand too far back, you simply cannot reach her at all. Now, once you've determined the correct position, you must match the frequency of the child swinging back. Pushing too soon, or too late can result in the opposite effect of what you are trying to accomplish. You can actually cancel out the force of her swinging which will result in her slowing down. Finally, let's assume you've figured out the correct position to stand in and the correct frequency, but now you must push her with the correct force. If you are pushing with too much force, suddenly, swinging is no longer fun for the child, as she begins to scream, begging to slow down, or worse yet, she looses her grip, and falls. Now, if you don't apply enough force, you might as well be sitting on the bench, watching her swing on her own.

Pushing a child on a swing is a very natural thing to do. Without being conscious of the physics behind it, most people can master this technique. Anyone that has mastered it, or otherwise has been on the receiving side of the beneficial push, will recognize that the enjoyment of the child, (and perhaps the one giving her the push) is maximized versus simply sitting on a nearby bench watching her swing by herself. Keynesian economics, in essence, is the practice of the government acting in the role of the pusher. This sounds great in theory, but when politics is involved, unfortunately, those variables, of distance, frequency and force are often mismanaged.

Right now, our nation is about like a family with two inept parents teetering on divorce, with three children all wanting a push on the swing set. Imagine the parents arguing with each other about where to stand, and how hard to push. The next thing you know, Dad gets hit in the jaw, because he is not paying attention, and suddenly their son is knocked off, and busts his nose on the ground. Now, you've got crying children, a bloody nose to clean up, and no doubt, some parents pointing their fingers at each, all to blame the other.

True Keynesian policy requires the dedication and finesse of a single person (or entity) with the best interest of the child (economy) in mind. Otherwise, with the misapplication, you might as well be sitting on the bench and let the economy swing itself, to minimize damage that can be done.

Currently, one part of the Keynesian economic equation that is controlled on a federal level is monetary policy which we have assigned to the Federal Reserve. Theoretically, the Federal Reserve acts in a non-partisan way to stimulate the economy, primarily by controlling the interest rates. If you set them too low, you risk over stimulating, and higher inflation, whereas if you set them too high, you can stifle the economy, and risk deflation. Economic stimulus and currency stability aren't the only roles of this federal institute, but they are no doubt, one of the more important ones.

Another component of the equation is fiscal policy, which is controlled by Congress, and ultimately approved by the President. Unfortunately, what we have learned to call this policy is "deficit spending." It's been called that, because that seems to be the only part of Keynesian economics that is ever applied. We have not learned to master the other side of this theory, and that is to learn to save (or otherwise let off) during years of growth. The idea is of Keynesian economics is for the government to spend, or otherwise stimulate the economy when it is down, and to back off when it is growing.

Since I've been alive, and even prior, we tend to give the child a push when needed, but then we run with the child to the other side, and keep on pushing, even though the momentum of the child would have been enough to carry her to the opposite point, as well as enough to make it all the way back to where you originally pushed her. The problem now is that the person doing the pushing becomes exhausted very quickly and before long he or she would want to give up. This is how we've mismanaged these goals in the past. Both political parties are to blame here, as both sides have done their fair share in spending, whether it's on entitlement programs that are out of balance, or military spending, or through mismanaged taxes. If one party pushes too hard, the other party attempts to run out and grab the child to slow her down. The next thing you know these two parties are at each other's throats. The child is then forced to choose a favorite parent (through elections) but ultimately they lock horns once again, and no real progress is made.

Now, with our current fiasco, we have discovered that it seems that neither party can get along. The situation is so bad, that the only thing that they could agree on, is to disagree, and to hold off on any real decision making until the after the next election cycle, (or beyond) to end this fight. This is the reason why the S&P downgraded the US. It was the lack of true leadership. Call it brinkmanship, call bad politics, or whatever you want, at the end of the day, our elected leaders failed to deliver. The S&P is simply looking at the situation, and they are placing their bets on the side that says, "I don't think this is going to get any better anytime soon." I don't think anyone can blame them for that. If history proves to repeat itself, then we'll see the same fight all over again in 2013 and beyond, unless we change something.

I propose that we change who makes the decision on how much of a deficit, or surplus we have and perhaps to some degree how we get to that point. What if we removed politics out of this decision? In a way, having politicians deciding what is right or wrong here, makes about as much sense as having congress vote on whether or not to call for evacuations for a given city, to get out of the way of an approaching hurricane. As a weather enthusiast, I can tell you that the professionals at the National Hurricane Center (NHC), rely upon all sorts of models, and data to make their forecasts, which ultimately determines who, if anyone, needs to evacuate. I can't even begin to imagine the chaos if this were some political decision. I've seen people argue over which models are superior, in the comment sections of weather blogs. Like myself, these people are usually passionate enthusiasts, but most of them aren't experts. Ultimately, though, none of the models are perfectly correct, yet the NHC gives fairly accurate forecasts, despite this. They are able to do so, because they are experts. For you sports types, just think of these weather blog commenters in the same way you hear from Monday morning quarterbacks, armed with the latest statistics. Perhaps Congress is a step or two above being a Monday morning quarterback, but do they really have the best long term goals in mind? More importantly, do you think they really understand what the economic data means and what policies to implement?

On the monetary policy side of things, the Federal Reserve, acts much like the NHC. When you read their commentaries, and their reports, they are written from the standpoint of economics, oftentimes with dry language that gets to the point. They make their monetary policy decisions based on this economic information and not politics. (Sometimes they are even known to oppose the party that appointed them.) On the other hand, for fiscal policies, at best, they just provide advice to Congress. At the end of the day though, Congress must still decide on fiscal policies. Unfortunately, even the best of them have a propensity to miss the mark, simply because politics stands in the way. As I've demonstrated by my swinging child example, any variable that is off can actually be counter productive. Even the Federal Reserve has missed the mark in the past, but for each target they miss, they learn to better adjust their aim. The NHC, likewise does the same for hurricane forecasting. Each year, though, they fine tune their craft, and forecasts do get better.

The understanding of economics in many ways, is not much different than weather. So, why not have more experts involved with the decision making. Why not have experts that have goals that last more than 4 years? I know the idea of stripping this from Congress seems, perhaps like it is a step too far, as if we are removing power from the our representative government. But, then these days, it seems that we cannot afford to give them the responsibility either.

My initial thoughts on this are to put more of this fiscal responsibility into the hands of the entity that we currently call the Federal Reserve. Why? Simply because they already have the capabilities to "read" the economy. They have the best tools to decide when to push, and when to step back and they have the experience to use those tools. They implement this information every time they meet to make adjust monetary policy, why not do the same for fiscal policy? Perhaps Congress would have some role in making these decisions, and they should, but perhaps their policies should fit within the recommended range of this entity. If the entity says to raise the taxes, Congress would simply ask "how high". Or better yet, if they suggested to lower them, Congress asks how low, or for whom. When it comes to having a deficit, balance or a surplus budget, this entity could decide which policy to follow, and by how much, and pass that guideline to Congress. Congress at that point, would have to hash out the details as they have always have done, but keep within the prescribed range. Perhaps this entity could hash out the details ahead of time, and create a few variable plans, and hand those to Congress who would then vote on them based on what would best serve their constituents.

I think these ideas are certainly something worth debating. Ultimately, in order for this to work, you would have to give this entity some teeth, enough to enforce their guiding budget principles. Not doing so would all be a legislative waste of time. I have no doubts someone would bring up the constitutionality of such a measure. If that is true, then maybe this is something that should warrant such a change. I do know one thing though: the status quo is not getting the job done, and I'm afraid we are running out of time. This is just my idea, but if you think of something better, then by all means, let's discuss that. We cannot afford to sit around and do nothing.




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The Theory of Everything Explained

Tonight, after doing some "deep" thinking, I came up with the "Theory of Everything". OK, by that, I mean the theory of how seemingly "nothing" could turn into everything you see today. My theory proposes that everything that exists today is made up of, and originated from exactly one particle. Admittedly, I cannot explain the origin of the first particle, only how it became everything we know today. Open your mind and read more below.



Ok, the concept here is simple: all things started with one elementary particle, and only one elementary particle has ever existed and that all things are made of this one particle. This particle, which you may call the "God" particle, (though not necessarily the same as the currently sought after "Higgs boson" particle) I'll name the "genesis" particle, to help differentiate from the others. This one particle has the ability to travel back and forth through time. A better way to think of it is that it can vibrate forwards and backwards through time. Now, suppose that initially this genesis particle existed for "x" amount of time. (Any amount of time could be used, I suppose... at least in the "early stage" of this theory. You can use one second, if that makes it easy to imagine.) In fact, better than that, we'll say that this unit of time of its existence is the most elementary unit of time possible. In other words, no other division of time is smaller (unless otherwise imaginary), just as no other particle could be more elementary. I'll call this unit of time a "bop." Now, suppose the genesis particle vibrated around and lasted for one bop. Then let's just say that it travels back in time by exactly one bop, and when it does, it "meets" the earlier version of itself. Next, the process repeats, and the two twin particles vibrate for one bop and then appear back in time by one bop, making four particles (which are all really just the same particle, just from different time frames, folded upon itself (in a nearby space.)

>Here's a crude drawing to represent what happens:

For a quick thought on this....
Imagine if you will, if you owned a telephone booth sized time machine. And you stood in front of it for a minute, and sort of wondered in a circle, before you decided to go in. When you enter, you emerge exactly one minute earlier in time, which means you find yourself standing in front of your one minute younger self. Now, imagine if the two of you repeated the same thing, so that there would be four of you.

Get the idea?

Now that initial step would repeat itself until the amount of matter grows to a critical point to where things start to interact with each other and perhaps some of those particles begin to clump together. The strangeness of this idea is that although all of the matter is really just the same particle, they begin to interact as if they are unique particles. Some continue to "duplicate" while other "rogue" particles clump together and form groups. These early groups would have formed the early ancestors to what we all know to be sub-atomic particles. Eventually this mass would have become very dense, and would have at that time initiated what we now refer to as the "Big Bang." The same physics from the that step on, as we've come to know them would then apply to the rest of the creation of the universe as we know it.

So there you have it. My theory of everything is that everything that you see is actually just one particle that continuously traveled back in time, which effectively duplicated itself in that instance of time, grew to a critical mass, enough to create the sub-atomic particles which began the universe that we all know today.

Now, you may wonder, why and how did I come up with this? Well, the answer is simple. I started off thinking about what it would be like to see yourself at an earlier state, by going back in time. Then I thought, if you could go back to see yourself in time, what would it be like if you had several of your future selves visit you? It would give the appearance of a growing mass. In fact, the amount of mass occupying that space would indeed have increased at that one instance in time. My next thoughts moved to, "what if that applied to just a single particle?" All of that led me to consider this a possibility however strange it may seem. Now granted, its a wild one, and its the type of thing that is born from late night, past-my-bedtime, type of thoughts. But then, think about it: What if this idea was possible and true? What would the implications be? What are your thoughts?


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Battle: LA

Alright, so I figured it's been awhile, ok - a really long time - since I've written anything into my blog. This'll also be the first time I'll actually post a link to this blog from Facebook. Maybe that's what I've been up to - Facebook... maybe that's why I haven't written anything in a while. Or, perhaps it's because I started a little landscaping business. Well, OK, so welcome to my blog (for an explainer to it click here. Ok, well, now it's time for a "stream of conscious" review of Battle: LA.

OK, so Battle: LA is ... well, it's OK. It's not great. It didn't present itself as such a novelty that I was looking for. But then again, I am picky. I only watch movies in the theater if it is "theater worthy." The last theater worthy movie I saw was Inception, which I really did enjoy. The movie itself (talking about Battle: LA) was only theater worthy for the fact that it had big booming special effects -- special effects that we've all seen, but hey, what do you expect? The movie was rather predictable, you have an alien invasion that catches earth mostly off guard, but then you have an American hero that leads a group of people to help successfully take down the bad guys. Aside from the plot, there were even some jokes that I found to be very predictable. One great example was when they were looking for someone to hot wire a bus. One of the men jokes that a fellow platoon member (or whatever they're called) knew how because he was from Jersey. As soon as they started the line, I knew where they were going, and as a result I actually started laughing a 1/2 second before the rest of the audience did. Laughing ahead of the curve made me wonder if there's a connection between a person's intelligence, with respect to their ability to predict a pattern. To me, its kind of like reading the headlines and knowing what and how Jay Leno will be joking about them later that night. (I find myself doing that on a regular basis.) I could go on about what those implications are, but.. that's not the point. Anyways, back the the topic... this film was obviously shot to be like a military-documentary style movie. The director managed to pull this of fine in the battle scenes. That in itself wasn't worth criticizing. Instead, the bigger thing I found lacking was the alien invasion, its tactics, the technology -- the whole nine yards.

Here it is we've got another movie about an alien invasion (compare to Independence Day, Signs and War of the Worlds to name a few relatively recent ones), so you expect to have some original ideas to make these aliens stand out from alien invaders in other recent movies. There were a couple of unique things: one, the use of meteors as an explanation to the events leading up to the invasion and two, was the use of drones, by the aliens. You don't see too much drone action in other alien invader movies (Star Wars: The Clone Wars did come to mind), so this addition was a salute to the early 21'st century's use of drone aircraft in warfare. The problem with this is that the aliens' idea of drone technology was too much based on 21'st century thinking. (Its sort of like the way over-sized computers were used in early sci-fi shows, like Star Trek.) How so? The use of a terrestrial based central command center. By the time our current century ends, if we haven't killed each other off of the planet, (or have been wiped out by another doom's day scenario) this will have become obsolete. The reality is, most drones (which we'll have plenty of) will rely less on a central command center, and more upon swarm based robotics and intelligence. If you're reading this, you're probably wondering what swarm technology is. Well, I could explain it to you, but, it might be easier to just direct you to here: Wiki's Swarm Robotics Entry

There are many advantages to swarm robotics in warfare, the biggest one is not having to rely upon on central command center to control them all. OK, so then you might ask, "but who directs the swarm?" The answer to that is that the swarm itself does most of that. Sure, some alien out there will probably have some say in things, but really if you've got the technology to traverse a presumably great interstellar distance, certainly you would have invested in some better AI technology for your war robots.

In the scheme of things, these aliens are only slightly more advanced than we humans currently are. In 50-100 years, most of the alien technology that is used in the movie, will certainly be obtainable (except the interstellar travel part - I think that's still a bit farther off.) Otherwise, things like the use if a prosthetic limb which happens to be a weapon, could probably be done today with some DARPA funding. (The main concern there is not the technology, but the ethics behind it.)

Back to the central command thing, the idea that aliens would have a single weak spot, that if hit, delivers such a terrible blow that the whole invasion fails comes up time and time again in alien invasion movies. Surely by now, some alien would have gotten a Netflix account and would have watched a few movies to figure out that we humans always look to discover this weak point. Every Single. Time. Seriously, think about it, if you were told to go invade another planet that had life, intelligent enough to make streaming Internet movies, wouldn't you hack the system and create your own Netflix-like account to learn their preferred method in taking out aliens? If not movies, buying a PlayStation and a couple of alien shoot 'em ups would suffice. So, putting that aside, that to me, just shows the unoriginality of the story's writers. Quite frankly, most science fiction gets it wrong here in my opinion on so many levels. I'd talk more about that, but I'm saving that for the novel that I'm currently working on. I'll just say this: nano-technology. Enough said.

One thing I wished the writers would have done is to have elaborated more on how the aliens used water as a fuel source. We could speculate that it has something to do with fuel cells, but hydrogen in that equation is really just an energy delivery system. In other words, it is not an energy source. So, then we could speculate that it was part of a reaction with some other material being used as a catalyst of some sort. I don't know... but then, adding that detail would have been "beside(s) the point" right? I'm secretly hoping that a better explanation will be found in the form of a deleted scene that will be available in the DVD/Blu-Ray release. I know, dream on.

Well, so there you have it, that effectively ends my review of the film which ends this post. Now you can review my review!

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Techlepathy

In this evening’s entry, I’m going to focus in on future technology, specifically augmented reality and technology enabled telepathy or what I’m going to call technotelepathy.

I was going to use the word technopathy, but it’s a word that, according to Google, already exists. Technopathy is specifically referenced as being a capability to manipulate ordinary electronics with a person’s mind. This specifically is a reference to an ability of Micah Sanders, a character on the show, “Heros” (which I don’t watch.) Doing a search on technotelepathy reveals, again, that I’m not the first person to come up with this word either. Being relatively new and unknown and therefore a lesser used word, Google gives a search suggestion to split techno and telepathy into two words, but I’m going to keep them together. Google also reveals that the word has been used about 77 times on the Internet (when repeat entries are omitted.) So, I suppose, this will make yet another “hit”. And, it looks as if the use of the word is associated to my topic, so I just may use it. Looking for a shorter version, I’ve found the word techlepathy. Techlepathy, has a nice ring to it, and it turns out that it’s a more commonly used word, which also tends to describe my usage of the yet-to-be christened word. (That is, it doesn’t seem to appear in any official online dictionaries or Wikipedia. In fact, Wiki only refers to it as technology enabled telepathy, which brings back to the beginning of this conversation.

{A quick interjection here—if you’re keeping up with all of this, the process that I just went through is how I do a lot of what I do when it comes to developing ideas, and learning about the many concepts that I’ve stuffed into my cranium over the years. I call it the Google Method of thinking (somewhat inspired by the Scientific Method.) In the Google Method, you think of an idea, you Google it, then you roll through a few entries to verify the existence of your idea. You see, the idea could be completely original to me at that time of thought, but I’ve learned to accept that it probably already exists. The concept of techlepathy, for example has existed before I was even born. In my own mind, I’d come up with the concept about 10 years ago. On the rare occasion, it’s possible that I may think of something completely original, and when that happens, I’ll let you know. Techlepathy just isn’t one of them. Anyway, that’s the Google Method.}

Now that we’ve gotten the word “techlepathy” knocked out of the way, let’s talk about what it is, what it’s going to do, and why I’m talking about it now. Also, I first mentioned that I would be discussing augmented reality. For those of you who have heard of that concept, then you’re probably thinking that I’m referring to the technology that allows you to experience reality, as you see it today, but with enhanced information. Think of those war/shoot-em up video games that display your teammate’s name and other information like the amount of ammo or health a person has, on the screen, well that’s augmented reality. Technically, it’s a virtually augmented reality, but you get the idea. In my brain, my neurons took a vote and decided that techlepathy is a segment of augmented reality. {Edit.. actually although true techlepathy is a form of of augmented reality, the use of it here is not what I'd call augmented reality.}

Now, some of you may be wondering why I’m even talking about techlepathy, because after all, isn’t this exotic technology still, years, if not decades away? If you ever heard me discussing this 10 years ago, I would have told you that it looked to be decades away, but none-the-less very probable. Well now, the fact is, it’s already here. And quite frankly, it’s been here for a few years now. Today, it’s even on the verge of becoming part of our everyday experiences, at least for entertainment’s sake. This call all be thanks to the new Mindflex game by Mattel. Sure, the game makes claims of telekinesis, but in all reality it’s an early start to technokinesis, that’s made possible through an early version of techlepathy. The goal of the game is to manipulate a floating ball through a series of physical obstacles through three dimensional space.

Don’t be fooled, there is a little smoke and mirrors involved, but there’s also a true bit of techlepathy. The floating ball trick is an old one, pulled off using the properties of air pressure and aerodynamics to lift a ping pong ball by blowing a steady stream of air from below. The ball’s horizontal movement turns out to be controlled by manipulating a control with your fingers. So what’s the catch? Where’s the techlepathy and/or technokinesis here? Well, that lies in the way you move the ball vertically. Your brain controls the volume of air blowing vertically onto the ball, thus adjusting its vertical position. In all, it’s a combination of using physical controls along with a brain reading headset that gets the job done.

My prediction is that, initially, this game will be a hit. It may very likely become a fad that crosses all cultures, generations and genders. After all, who hasn’t fantasized about manipulating a physical object with their mind. This game will certainly accomplish that. After some time, after it becomes more of a commonly held experience and looses its sense as a novelty, the game’s popularity will drop, but not without changing how we, as a world, think about techlepathy. Mattel will very likely continue to at least draw in younger children for years to come.

Now Mindflex is just a game with a low level ability to read, at best crude brain signals. Perhaps you’ve also have seen or heard of cases where amputees have controlled a bionic limb, or where a paraplegic man controls a cursor on a computer screen to help him communicate. Even monkeys have been outfitted with such devices to control artificial arms to receive a reward. All of these are receiving the sum of all of the signals that are released from brain activity. Think of it as being as nebulous as trying to follow a game by listening to the roars of a crowd at huge sports event while blindfolded, sitting up in the nosebleed section, without knowing much about the sporting event, let alone the teams that are playing. You could even throw a language difference between you and the crowd. If you understood the language, you might be able to discern who’s doing well based on who’s cheering the loudest or perhaps by the announcer on the loudspeaker, but outside of that, you’re not likely to gain much more insight about anything else. Without the ability to understand the language of the crowd, at most you might be able to tell that something exciting has happened.

Now, with a little bit of prompting and practice on behalf of the crowd, perhaps focusing the crowd so that most of the people attending where overwhelmingly rooting for one team, it may be possible, to pick up on what’s going on, even with a language barrier. Think of it as if you’d gone to a college football game at Kyle Field in College Station, Texas, watching the Texas Aggies play against a fierce or well known opponent. And if you know anything about an Aggie football game, especially played at home, you would know the intensity that the home crowd can bring to a game. (And yes, I’m an Aggie, so I have some experience, and perhaps a bit of a bias for Texas Aggie football.) It’s been observed and noted many times how the crowd at Kyle field has given the Aggies an advantage over even the most formidable foes of the season. Even if all you knew was that you were at a sporting event and nothing about the game, and didn’t speak the language, you would still be able to determine when the home team did something praiseworthy. And you may even attempt to participate in the one of the yells that Aggies practice before each game. Being an observer in that whole experience, is the equivalent of using the same brain reading technology, but with a focused mind capable of adjusting to outside stimulus.

Even though the technology may not be able to read your thoughts any better, it’s the brain that is learning to adjust to the technology and its new feedback. Our use of this technology will initially rely upon this principle. Right now, we’ve mostly only seen the adult human brain interacting with this technology. But imagine what it might be like if you could take an entire generation from nearly birth and have them use these capabilities as it stands today. If you can imagine that, then you could also conclude that it’s possible for a high level of telepathic manipulation to be possible. Imagine neurons being dedicated to the technology. There may be some of you that would regard such an experiment as being cruel, but doing an experiment won’t be necessary anymore than my generation had computers and video games experiments forced upon us. The truth is, once we were exposed, we sought out the new experiences and sensations. Our brains have indeed developed differently than our ancestors as neurons have dedicated themselves to video game concepts, artificial map reading, hyper communication and pattern recognition all associated with hours of exposure to that technology. I can remember even as a child, thinking about how video games were secretly training our generation to fight in advanced warfare. I can also remember not being alone in that thought. We could sense how we were thinking differently, and how that could someday be exploited. Indeed, our childhood intuition and prognostication was correct, as military technology has advanced to take advantage of the skills that so many of my generation have spent a childhood developing. And it’s not much of a stretch to imagine that just as computer and video game technology grew with my generation, so the same will be true for these new techlepathy technologies, combined with, you guessed it, advanced video game technology.

I’m going to pause with that thought for tonight. But, expect this conversation to continue, as there are many, many avenues to explore.

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H1N1... an update

Its tough to call this an update, since I haven't commented on H1N1 (aka Swine Flu) online yet, but I'll call this an update, since we're all aware of its presence. Our awareness has begun to pick up recently thanks in part due to the recent spike in activity. In fact, it seemed that last weekend, an explosion of activity, at least from my vantage point in North Texas, commenced.

I had a niece, a cousin-in-law, some friends of my family (their children specifically) and a few others report having swine flu or influenza-like-illness (ILI - as termed by the CDC) all within the last week. This sudden increase in activity is correlated to an increase in reports from the CDC as shown on this chart: (Note-- these figures are based off of serious cases that require hospitalization as a percent of visits.)

Source: CDC (Posted September 25, 2009, 1:30 PM ET, for Week Ending September 19, 2009)

Apparently, for this time period, nearly 99% of people in the US who have the flu have tested positive for H1N1. (See chart below.) So, what this all boils down to is that if you get the flu, chances are you've got swine flu. The same is true for most of the globe, except for most of Africa and parts of the Middle East where the regular flu outpaced H1N1 by a 3:1 (or greater) margin. I should point out that even there H1N1 has started to increase in activity, and I'm afraid those numbers are only going to continue their trend.

(Valid for the US)	Week 37
No. of specimens tested	9,744
No. of positive specimens (%)	2,326 (23.9%)
Positive specimens by type/subtype
Influenza A	2,324 (99.9%)
A (2009 H1N1)	1,395 (60.0%)
A (subtyping not performed)	907 (39.0%)
A (unable to subtype)	17 (0.7%)
A (H3)	1 (0.1%)
A (H1)	4 (0.2%)
Influenza B	2 (0.1%)

Source: CDC

Now, this ratio is likely going to change as the regular flu season get up and going. There are several possibilities that could make things interesting (though not in a good way) once that does happen. For one, if you get H1N1, would it still be possible for you to catch the regular flu, or is there enough of a genetic similarity to keep you immune? It makes sense that since the regular flu vaccine won't keep you from getting H1N1, then the opposite may be true. Therefore, you could get both types in the same season.

The other possibility is that the two could combine. Its hard to guess whether or not a combination of the two would make matters worse or not. It could be possible that if they combine, then the regular flu vaccine could help prevent the combo from spreading. On the other hand, it could render both vaccines ineffective, or less effective. I do want to note that my niece was officially diagnosed with both influenza A (which covers H1N1) and B. Which, that doesn't sound like a good thing (certainly neither for her nor for the higher chance of a cross mutation.) {Update: I wanted to let you know that my niece has fully recovered, and was much better after about 3-4 days. Also, her parents and sister haven't contracted the disease either (yet.)}
It would seem to make sense that the disease could mutate into multiple possibilities, but only a few of those survive to pass itself on to others. After all, its not like Mother Nature has some hidden war room, where she has a section called "Infectious Diseases" where she commands her minions, with the accent of an old evil British sounding lady, to update the H1N1 code and hit a Hong Kong poultry market with the famous "mu hahahaha" evil laugh to end her sentence. The reality is that when something, like a virus, mutates, the chances are that it does so multiple times, across the globe, with similar, though not necessarily exact, mutations. Each one of those mutations will have a different chance to survive, depending on its environment, nearby carrier agents, and so on. Its the sum of all of those chances that causes something new enough to happen that our collective immune system wouldn't recognize it.

So, my recommendation is to get both vaccines as soon as its available for you. As it is, I'll personally have to wait until after just about everyone else, since I'm older than 24, younger than 60, male (therefore not pregnant ;-) ) and I don't have frequent contact with children.
My prediction: expect H1N1 to peak in the US around Thanksgiving (due to having already spread itself rapidly, combined with the release of a vaccine coming in October.) This will be just in time for the beginning of the regular flu season. The regular flu season will be less active than normal, thanks in part due to the awareness of the public leading to a higher percent off people getting their flu shots. Globally, things may not be so rosy, especially in developing countries, like in Africa and SE Asia. The one saving grace there is that most of the people that live there, live near the Equator, and therefore the virus may not survive as long in the normal environment.

For further reading please see:

US CDC:
http://www.cdc.gov/h1n1flu/updates/us/

WHO H1N1 overview:
http://www.who.int/csr/disease/swineflu/en/

WHO H1N1 situation updates:
http://www.who.int/csr/disease/swineflu/updates/en/

Thanks for reading this! If you have an opinion about what you've read, please comment below!

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The end of the PPX.

As some of you may know, I've been an active trader on the PopSci Predictions Exchange (PPX) for the past two years. During that time, I've marched my way to the top 15 (#14 as of this writing) out of over 33,000 traders. As of last Friday (May 8, 2009) it was announced that the PPX will be closing effective June 1st. So, I wrote the following commentary to express my thoughts on why and how this came to be.

{Disclaimer: The following is pure speculation and is not a real reflection of PopSci or Bonnier, nor am I employed in any way monetarily compensated or tied in to those respective organizations.}

There's pretty much only one way to sum up all of this: economics. To dig down deeper we look at the history of PopSci, and to do that we turn back to January 25, 2007, the day that Bonnier Corporation bought PopSci, along with 17 other magazines from Time Warner. This was during a time when magazine subscriptions and sales were dropping, while online readership increased (and if you’ve been keeping up with the news lately, you know that this has only accelerated.)
Unfortunately, the ad and subscription revenue model changes when things start moving towards the online world. There are a few reasons for this. For one, a good bit of the content that can be found in the magazine can also be found online, for free (to the reader.) But, keep in mind that for every PopSci magazine sold, there are about 5 readers to that magazine. So, in other words, of all of the readers, only 1 in 5 is actually paying for it. And those that do are only paying around $1 per month. You can take that $1 and divide it up into readers and that means that each reader contributes about 20 cents a month on average. So the with the online world there really isn't much lost in the way of subscription revenue, it’s the ad revenue that counts.
You'll notice that in the back of each PopSci mag, there are lots of what I call "secondary" or "classified ads." These ads sell everything from you-know-what enhancement and remedies to an assortment of gadgets and the likes. If you notice, those ads aren't found here online. Then there are primary ads for cars and trucks, shavers, flashlights, laptops, you know, the stuff that you're more likely to buy, or would at least be interested in. Chances are that if it is advertised in the magazine, then at one time it may have had an entry into my favorite section, "What’s New." Otherwise, there's a good chance that those companies sell products that compete against those things that are new. There’s no doubt, that a lot of marketing on behalf of the PopSci /Bonnier staff that goes on to seek potential advertisers who may be interested in placing their ads near an article that may be related to their product.

Now, the price paid for that advertisement space is all driven by supply and demand. Supply is the amount of ad space within a magazine while demand is the amount of people who want to advertise in that space. Those advertisers look at a set of more complicated factors, like the number of readers who are likely to someday purchase a product that that company offers within a given time period. Essentially, it’s the advertiser's goal to drive brand recognition. They know that you may not buy that truck that you see in the magazine today, but, eventually you just might. Generally, the higher the price the product is, the more you have to sustain your sales pitch to your audience.

So, that brings us back to our problem: economics. With the economy the way it is, the demand for print ads is down. This has been driven by the fact that we, as consumers, just aren’t in much of a mood to buy things, and besides we’re too busy hanging out on MySpace of Facebook to really care. Well, that changes the advertiser’s focus. Suddenly, they’re not as interested in placing ads in print magazines; they’re more interested in capturing your attention online. So they tell the print publisher, “Well, I’m just not that interested in placing an ad this year.” The publisher replies with a lower price, and eventually the advertiser agrees to run the ad since the price is now more affordable. So with that, you can see the problem: you’re still printing the same amount of ads, but now you’re just getting less money for them.

That brings us back into the selling of PopSci to the Bonnie Corporation. One company, Time Warner, sees that it’s simply better to sell off its underperforming brands while Bonnier sees the opportunity to gain new market share and turn the revenue stream around for its newly purchased publisher. Suddenly, new creative ideas sprang up to solve this problem of decreased print ad revenue, and increase its online ad revenue. The solution seems simple, if you can create a way to get readers to return to your website and do so, repetitively, over the long run, you can increase the demand for ad space, especially from those companies that need to keep brand recognition high. Those advertisements work best when you have a returning audience. You can charge advertisers for a pay-per-view (1000s of views) in addition to a pay-per-click fee. So out of this realization and creative process, PopSci comes up with idea to do an online exchange, yes, the PPX.

The PPX seems like it is the magical bullet needed to solve the problem. Not only will the readers be engaged in an online activity that will keep them returning, but each visit may require several clicks and thus increases the chances of pay-per-click revenue. At the same time, our ad space becomes more attractive to those long term brand recognition driven advertisers, and that could lead to pay-per-view revenue. And, to top it all off, the PPX becomes a scientific tool itself, as it becomes a science experiment to determine the viability of predictions markets.
Out of the gate, the PPX was a bit flawed. For example, despite the claim, the price of a proposition doesn’t necessarily reflect the percentage of people who think a proposition will come true. The claim is that if the price is at POP$50, then 50% of the audience thinks it could happen, and 50% does not. But in reality we know that if one person buys 1000 shares, then the price goes up by POP$ 0.25. (Now, I know a parameter has been added so that a stock’s could only move after it achieved a high enough volume - apparently to one direction.) So, if only one person buys 1000 shares, then according to the price, 50.25% percent of the traders of that particular proposition think that that event will occur. In reality, 100% of the traders of that stock, so far, agree. (On the other hand if there were 10,000 traders, that would only represent 1/10,000th of the market.) Once the stock price starts to move, Most traders bought or sold in the direction of the movement, whether they agreed or not. Now, it was argued that over time, the price would better reflect the opinions of the traders, but we all know that there was a disconnect between trader’s opinions and prop price.

Another example of a flaw was the limitation to buy only 1000 shares. Though this was important given that the price went up or down based on 1000 shares of movement, this limited the ability for a proposition to reach its true price. If the pricing was based on a scale that was determined by the total number of outstanding shares of that stock rather than 1000 shares of movement, this concept would have worked better. (It’s important to keep in mind that for every new trader who owns a prop, either short or long, the amount of outstanding shares increases by the amount purchased. This is unlike the real stock market where there is a limited quantity of shares available, for every share bought, one must be sold. For arguments sake, ignore stock splits and issuance of new stock, etc.) In other words, as number of outstanding shares per a given prop increases, the smaller the price change interval would be. The price change interval would be determined by a function of the number of newly purchased shares as a percent of current outstanding shares. There would of course be a minimum and maximum price change interval, for example: at least $.01 no greater than $0.25. Another reason that the maximum shares were limited, was to encourage people to buy more shares of different props (portfolio diversification), but the principle to not put all of your eggs into one basket would have kept this in check. Finally, the 1000 share max rule could make sense to give more traders an equal chance to participate. This is a fair and valid reason, but I think that a limitation of buying more than a percentage (based on outstanding shares) of a given prop per a predetermined amount of time would have helped. Also the pricing model, as stated above, would have reduced the propensity for market domination by a select few elite traders.

Furthermore, the game was complex and perhaps too complicated to understand for too many of those who wanted to participate. This can easily be seen by simply counting the total number of players who never traded and those who never earned as much, or lost a significant portion of their original portfolio values. Finally, those flaws were matched by visual and web design mistakes. It seemed that every time a new feature was rolled out, it was met with more problems. For example: a menu wouldn’t work, a broken links, etc.

So those flaws that I’ve described reduced the number of would-be traders. (Satisfied traders encourage new traders to join.) This all drives me back to making my point: economics. As discussed, the ad revenue is the primary driver, and the goal should have been to sale ads based on both concepts: per view, and per click. Unfortunately, the way PPX is set up, it simply doesn’t cut it. With each user, you can only get so many ad clicks per ad per a given time frame. When you think about the mechanics how the PPX is set up, most of the ads are ignored as traders are focused on trading and not the ads. Once you’ve seen the ad, each new time you see it within a short time frame, isn’t going to drive you to click on it any more than the previous times. It’s the rule of diminishing returns. After awhile, similar ads just become a blur during the trade process.
To overcome this lack of clicking, the only way to create more revenue is to have more registered users, and those people need to be return users who visit frequently. Unfortunately, out of the 1.3 million subscribers or 6.7 million readers, there were only 33,000 registered PPX users. We can only guess that a small fraction of those actually returned to play frequently. That’s the problem that we have today. PPX was set up on a 2 year contract with Virtual Specialist, the operators of PPX. This of course likely had the option to renew. As far as we know, PopSci had full intentions to renew the contract over and over again, but only provided that it brought in enough of a revenue stream to compensate for the monthly licensing and site maintenance fees and then some. PopSci knew of its problem long ago. It knew that growth was limited and that there was a diminishing rate each passing month. It tried to solve the problem by correcting some of the problems cited by its users, and they were able to do this by hiring better staff members who understood these dynamics. They even spent the money to upgrade the look and feel of the site. Unfortunately, this didn’t go as smoothly, and it really wasn’t making much of an impact. So, an important business decision had to be made. Do we spend the money, fix the flaws, and find new ways to encourage new people to play, or do we cut our losses and retool our site with a different function for our readers while maintaining the function of creating an ad-based revenue source? I’m sure that in the end, it was a tough decision to make by those who were directly involved, and probably a much easier one to make for those who count the change and keep the budget.

Now, as a final note, you do have to question the decision to bring on a quiz model. If the picture of the school aged children that was used to promote the leagues, which never worked, is any indication to the direction of this website, it shows the desire to hit a larger different spectrum of the readers. You see, it appears as if a majority of those 6.7 million readers were school aged (9-15 years), and not 16-60 year olds who play PPX. The only question is, do they have the money to buy things, and if not do they have the ability to convince those who do have the money to buy things?

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Texas' Economic Condition - An Excerpt from the Beige Book

Since the economy is in a full downturn, I thought I would place the excerpt of the Beige Book report that covers the Dallas District (which reports economic conditions across the state of Texas.) To see the full report click here. (Otherwise, click on "read more" to read just the Dallas District exerpt.)


ELEVENTH DISTRICT—DALLAS
     Economic conditions in the Eleventh District continued to weaken from mid-November to year-end 2008. Contacts across a broad range of industries noted reduced demand and uncertainty about the outlook. Manufacturing, commercial construction, energy and transportation services generally reported the largest drop in demand while residential construction remains at low levels. Accounting and legal services seemed to hold up the best although they reported that demand was flat to slightly down. Bank lending declined due to tighter credit and weaker loan demand. Most respondents don’t expect conditions to improve until the second half of 2009 with a growing number of respondents now looking at early 2010. Prices. In general most service firms reported no change in prices while most goods producers reported declines. Many manufacturing respondents noted that while energy costs have come down, lower capacity utilization rates have put upward pressure on per unit production costs. Retailers reported large discounts were needed to move merchandise over the holiday season. Many contacts reported that fuel surcharges for transportation that were instituted earlier in 2008 were being dropped. Light sweet crude oil fell to $37 per barrel by year-end, the lowest price since 2004, from $55 per barrel in mid-November. Contacts said a huge over-supply of crude oil driven by the US and global slowdown led to the decline and that consecutive cuts by OPEC were not sufficient to stem the decline. Oil product prices fell as fast as crude oil, leaving refiner margins weak. On-highway prices for both gasoline and diesel fell by about 50 cents per gallon since the last survey and natural gas prices declined by about a $1 per Mcf from $6.50 per Mcf in mid-November.

Labor Market
     Labor markets remained weak as most contacts reported that they had maintained or reduced employment since the last survey. Labor markets were weakest in manufacturing where many firms extended temporary plant closings or reduced operating hours. Many manufacturing contacts reported that they had laid off temporary or hourly workers and that they are likely to reduce full-time staff at the start of the year. Layoffs were becoming widespread in the energy industry, and they are expected to grow in 2009. Many contacts reported hiring freezes and reported little if any wage increases. Manufacturing. Most manufacturing contacts reported declines in demand and reductions in capacity utilization. Most contacts said that they have managed to keep their inventories at desired lean levels but an increased number of contacts reported that inventories had risen to higher than desired levels. Construction-related manufacturers reported continued declines in shipments and orders even after adjusting for normal seasonal reductions. Most producers reported reductions in jobs and expect further cuts in early 2009. Some contacts noted that the recent plunge in commodity prices provided only slight relief in the cost of production since capital costs per unit of output have increased as capacity utilization has declined and because pricing on rail and truck transportation and coal have not fallen due to long-term contracts. Contacts continue to report that demand from commercial construction is shrinking rapidly with the main exception being government sponsored projects. Contacts reported that the outlook has gotten worse and most do not expect a turnaround until late 2009. Most respondents in high-tech manufacturing industries report that demand has fallen moderately since the last survey. Weakness was widespread across global markets and products. Most firms said that they were planning to reduce employment over the next several months. Respondents reported lean inventories, although one respondent said the recent reduction in demand from Asia had caught them off guard and that they were working aggressively to reduce inventories. While one respondent noted that their factories were running at only 40 to 45 percent of capacity, another respondent said that the current downturn is not nearly as bad as the high-tech recession in 2001. Most respondents expect some improvement in demand sometime in the second half of 2009. Paper manufacturers reported continued declines in production and orders. Demand for corrugated paper used for boxes and packing material has fallen sharply. Contacts noted that this is a reflection of the overall weakness in manufacturing as producers of a wide range of products are shipping less output. Noted exceptions to the weakness are food processors, where contacts suggest that their industry remains recession-proof. Respondents reported that while margins for gasoline were particularly weak, refinery capacity utilization held steady at about 85 percent. Respondents in petrochemicals and derivative plastics said that demand and prices have fallen sharply since the last survey. The decline in demand stemmed from declines in domestic housing, autos, and general manufacturing activity, as well as export markets. At least 10 large plants have shutdown on the Gulf Coast in recent weeks, and others have cut runs. Layoffs have been widespread among firms and their contractors.

Retail Sales
     Almost all retailers reported weak holiday sales. The weakness was broad-based and included discount stores. One contact noted that it was the worst holiday season for his company in 38 years. Weakness was broad-based across department store products but contacts noted particularly sharp declines in demand for jewelry and men’s clothing. A contact with stores throughout the District said that year-over-year sales declined the most in Dallas and the least in Houston. Department store contacts expect demand to be weak throughout most of 2009. Auto dealers report that sales and traffic continue to fall from already depressed levels. While domestic brands have been hit the hardest, contacts report that recent declines have been broad-based across all vehicle brands. Respondents report that manufacturer incentives are ample but that they are not having as much impact as in the past. One respondent said that in order to reduce his inventory, he likely will not order any new vehicles until February. A bright spot is used car sales and repair services which have increased slightly since the last survey. Most contacts expected very weak new vehicle sales at least though the first half of 2009. Contacts are hoping for some improvement in the second half of the year but are cautious since the outlook remains very uncertain. Services. Staffing firms report that demand remains sluggish. Most contacts report that there is little demand for permanent hires. Although their customers are keeping many short-term contract positions, they are not adding new positions. Contacts said that demand has been reduced by temporary plant closings, many of which have been extended due to weak demand conditions. Contacts report that some staffing firms are beginning to lower rates to remain competitive and retain market share. Accounting and legal firms report that activity was flat to slightly down since the last survey and that receivables are getting slower and harder to collect. Legal firms reported new real estate projects have dropped off sharply and that many projects are being put on hold for an indefinite period of time. International business has also declined. Offsetting this has been an increase in litigation and bankruptcy services. Airlines report that demand continues to weaken and that it is likely to continue to fall over the next six months. Respondents in container cargo and intermodal trade report a sharp drop off in activity since the last survey due to declines in international trade volumes. Intermodal transport services also noted a decline in demand. Shipping companies reported that the largest declines in volumes have been to retailers although consumer shipments have also weakened.

Construction and Real Estate
     Housing conditions in the District remain very weak, according to respondents. Home sales have fallen considerably since credit conditions tightened, and respondents report that traffic remains nearly nonexistent. Contacts reported that cancellations remain prevalent, in some cases outpacing sales. Median home prices have edged down but have avoided the double digit declines prevalent in other areas of the country. Respondents say that compared to other areas in which they do business, Texas continues to fare better despite the poor conditions. District respondents said apartment demand fell over the survey period. New construction added units at the same time move-outs increased, leading to increases in vacancy rates. Commercial real estate transactions--both leasing and investment--have ground to a halt. Contacts reported “nothing is going on”. Outlooks remain uncertain, although one contact noted scattered signs of optimism, with people talking of possible opportunities in 2009.

Financial Services

     Financial services contacts in the District continued to report a slowdown in loan demand. Contacts reported that real estate deals were basically nonexistent except for the very low risk ones. Most contacts have seen a slight deterioration in credit quality, but quality is still stable overall. On some loans, contacts have increased the interest rate by methods such as basing spreads off the LIBOR rather than the prime, and setting a floor on the prime. Depository institutions report maintaining tight credit standards, and most report generally stable deposits. The slowdown in loan demand has been broad-based. Demand has decreased for mortgages and consumer loans, particularly auto loans and credit card issuance and purchase volume. Real estate lenders are very concerned about 2009 while other lenders expect either flat or very modest growth.

Energy
     Oil services and machinery contacts reported that drilling activity has declined in response to lower energy prices. The U.S. rig count slid by 15 percent, or 300 rigs, from the peak in August, with two-thirds of the decline coming in the last six weeks of the year. Texas is down 157 rigs since the peak, and 85 rigs of this decline have come in the last six weeks. Contacts reported that the brunt of the decline is land-based and natural- gas directed. Relatively expensive shale and tight gas led the upturn, and is now leading the downturn as well. Contacts said that offshore and international activity has held up much better, and should continue to do so, based on sponsorship by companies with a longer-term perspective and much deeper pockets.

Agriculture
     The cotton harvest is about 85 percent complete, and yields are lower than expected. Regions in Central Texas are suffering from a severe dry spell. The winter wheat and oats crops and pastureland are in need of rain in most parts of the District. Livestock are in fair condition but supplemental feeding is ongoing due to lack of pasture. Commodity prices have plunged from their earlier peaks but fertilizer prices have not declined as much, leaving farmers with low winter crop prices and high planting costs.

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