Central Perk

vineri, 4 decembrie 2015

Damn Cool Pics

Passengers Repair An Airplane After Being Stranded In Antarctica
She Might Look Like Just Another Blonde Barbie But This Girl Has Brains Too
Home Theaters You Wish You Had in Your House

Passengers Repair An Airplane After Being Stranded In Antarctica

Posted: 04 Dec 2015 03:53 PM PST

Three men were recently stranded in Antarctica for 8 days after the landing gear on their plane broke. After 8 days of work they finally found a solution and managed to escape the freezing cold with all their limbs intact.

She Might Look Like Just Another Blonde Barbie But This Girl Has Brains Too

Posted: 04 Dec 2015 03:09 PM PST

People often get the wrong idea about 22 year old Ashton Clarke. She's changed up her look so that she looks more like a blonde barbie but there's more to her than that. She is a psychology student at The University of Tennessee, an exhibited artist and she even speaks four languages.

Ashton has been using lip fillers, contact lenses, fake tanning and makeup to achieve this look since the age of 16 and says that her "fake" self makes her feel more comfortable and confident.

Home Theaters You Wish You Had in Your House

Posted: 04 Dec 2015 01:43 PM PST

Imagine having your very own movie theater in your house. You might get sick of everyone always wanting to come round to your place for movie night, but at least you could get them to bring the popcorn! The lucky owners of these Awesome Home Theaters don't have to imagine, because they just have to nip through a door and they're in their very own Private cinema. Some of these amazing rooms are just off the charts, especially the themed ones.

So check out this list of some of the most amazing home theaters you'll ever see for some serious inspiration!

Seth's Blog : Understanding the doublings

Understanding the doublings

If you seek to please 90% of your potential customers, all you need to do is the usual thing.

To please half the remaining potential market, you're going to need to work at least twice as hard.

And to please the next half, twice as hard again. It's Zeno's paradox, an endless road to getting to the end.

So, a letter with a stamp gets you on time deliverability 90% of the time.

Priority mail gets you the next 5%, and if you want to be sure of reaching just about everyone in a trackable, reliable way, you're going to have to step up and pay for a courier service. (And note the expensive part... you often don't know which people need to be couriered, so you have to pay to do it for everyone).

The rules apply to more than fulfillment. They apply to bedside manner, to customer service, to effort and originality in the kitchen as well.

Cheap food, quickly served, will please 90% of the audience. You'll have to invest in quality, preparation and service to get the next half, and then double it again for the half after that... etc.

Health care works the same way. 90% of the patients will respond to a treatment, but the next 5% will cost twice as much, and on and on...

The very end of the curve, the .5%, might be unpleasable, uncurable, unreachable without insane effort. Which is why organizations that please everyone are so extraordinarily rare.

One approach, which some organizations use, is to redefine your usual systems so you are able to please most people without your team going through a Herculean sprint every day, and then (this is a key element as well), eagerly and regularly apologizing and giving refunds to the one in 150 where it just can't be done.

Perfect is nice, but you can't afford it. None of us can.

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joi, 3 decembrie 2015

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Obama: "California Shooting Could be Terrorism"; Massive Weapons Arsenal Found; Suspects Radicalized in Trip to Pakistan
Euro Surges, Bonds Sink as ECB's Rate Cut to -0.3% and Pledge of More QE Until March 2017 "or Beyond" Not Dovish Enough
Factory Orders Bounce In-Line With Expectations; Autos Surprise to the Downside

Obama: "California Shooting Could be Terrorism"; Massive Weapons Arsenal Found; Suspects Radicalized in Trip to Pakistan

Posted: 03 Dec 2015 12:45 PM PST

In Search of a Motive

Police are still searching for a motive in a Couple's California Rampage that Killed 14.

Authorities sought on Thursday to determine if a couple accused of killing 14 people in a mass shooting at a workplace holiday party in Southern California had links to Islamic militant groups abroad, U.S. officials familiar with the investigation said.

Syed Rizwan Farook, 28, and Tashfeen Malik, 27, who had a 6-month-old daughter together, were killed in a shootout with police after Wednesday's massacre at the Inland Regional Center social services agency in the city of San Bernardino.

Farook and Malik were identified as Muslims and David Bowdich, the FBI assistant director in Los Angeles, said the couple had returned to the United States in July 2014 after a trip that included Pakistan and perhaps other countries. Farook did not have a criminal record, police said.

CNN, citing law enforcement sources, said Farook had been "radicalized." CNN also said he had been in touch through telephone and social media with more than one international terrorism suspect who was being investigated by the FBI.

Obama Says California Shooting Could Be Terrorism

The Financial Times reports Barack Obama Says California Shooting Could Be Terrorism.

President Barack Obama said on Thursday that the California shooting that left at least 14 people dead and wounded 21 others could be related to terrorism, but left open the potential that a workplace grievance may have been the motive.

The two suspects killed in a shootout with police on Wednesday were identified as Syed Rizwan Farook, 28, and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, 29. They had a massive arsenal of weapons on them during the shooting and at their residence in nearby Redlands, according to Jarrod Burguan, the San Bernardino police chief.

The suspects fired up to 75 rounds of ammunition at the Inland Regional Center, which provides services for more than 30,200 people with disabilities in Riverside and San Bernardino counties, said Mr Burguan. Authorities also found three pipe bombs combined into one device that was tied to a remote control toy car that failed to work.

The suspects shot another 76 rifle rounds in the stand-off with police that followed a hunt for them. In all, they had a stockpile of about 6,000 rounds of ammunition, while 12 pipe bombs were found at their home, in addition to hundreds of tools that could be used to construct improvised explosive devices and pipe bombs, said Mr Burguan.

David Bowdich, the FBI agent in charge of the Los Angeles office, said Farook visited Pakistan and returned to the US with Malik, who had a Pakistani passport, in July 2014. He was a US citizen, while his wife was in the US on a visa.

Hillary Wants US to Accept 65,000 Syrians as a "good Start"

Hey, let's ignore the obvious terrorism risks and accept 65,000 Syrians as "a start".

And so as to not inconvenience any potential terrorists, let's not do any background checks either. Obama calls background checks "unnecessary and impractical".

For details, please see Obama to Veto Bill Requiring Background Checks On Syrian Refugees; France Demands Tighter Controls, EU Balks; 31 States Won't Take Syrian Refugees.

ISIS Welcome

Another NSA Job Well Done

Congratulations to the NSA for recognizing Farook had been in phone conversations with terrorist suspects and for stopping this heinous attack in advance.

Oh wait, they didn't.

This is what I mean: The NSA is doing such a fantastic job, it clearly needs to collect even more data that it will not look at.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock

Euro Surges, Bonds Sink as ECB's Rate Cut to -0.3% and Pledge of More QE Until March 2017 "or Beyond" Not Dovish Enough

Posted: 03 Dec 2015 10:43 AM PST

ECB president Mario Draghi's announcement today regarding more QE fell far short of the sky-high expectations of market participants.

Draghi Recap

ECB would continue its €60bn-a-month bond buying program for another 6 months until March 2017 "or beyond".
ECB reduced key interest rate to a historic low of minus 0.3 percent.
ECB pledged to buy more assets with the proceeds of its existing bond purchases.
ECB announced it would buy municipal bonds in addition to standard government debt.

Japanesque Announcement Not Enough

Somehow that was not enough to excite the market. Here's an amusing quote courtesy of the Financial Times.

"The ECB delivered at the very low end of expectations," said Andrew Balls, chief officer for fixed income at Pimco. "There wasn't much to get excited about . . . markets were expecting an increase in the monthly purchase size."

Further negative interest rates were "nothing to get excited about". Apparently the only thing that would have satisfied Balls would have been an announcement the ECB would purchase still more European public debt securities.

Why not just buy them all and get it over with? Japan is effectively there right now.

Market Response

Index of Europe's 300 largest listed companies dropped 2.9%
Germany's DAX fell 3.0%
France's CAC 40 lost 3.2%
UK's FTSE 100 dipped 1.9%
US S&P 500 down 1.1% (market still open)
US DOW down 1.0% (market still open)

US Dollar 15-Minute Chart

After surging yesterday to a high last seen in March of 2003, the dollar index plunged 2% over the course of four hours today.

US 10-Year Treasury Yield 15-Minute Chart

More, More, More

The markets are clearly hooked on easing, always demanding more, more, and more. Japanesque announcements are simply not enough, nor are below zero interest rates to the tune of -0.3 percent.

Good luck with that.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock

Factory Orders Bounce In-Line With Expectations; Autos Surprise to the Downside

Posted: 03 Dec 2015 09:47 AM PST

Factory orders bounced, nearly in-line with the Econoday consensus estimate of 1.4 percent. The actual rise was 1.5% percent.

Don't give too much praise to the economists for a correct guess because they had a durable goods advanced report last week as a guiding key. The overall results were a mixed bag, with some components rising others faltering.

Factory orders bounced sharply higher in October and, together with the bounce higher for manufacturing in the industrial production report, confirm what was a very solid month for the sector. Factory orders rose 1.5 percent in the month led by a 2.9 percent surge in durable goods orders (revised 1 tenth lower from last week's advance release). This gain offsets a no change result for non-durable goods orders.

Excluding transportation, and orders tied to the biennial Dubai airshow, new orders rose a less exciting 0.2 percent. But indications from core capital goods are very strong with new orders surging 1.3 percent on top of a 0.5 percent orders gain in September. Turning to capital goods industries, new orders for machinery jumped 1.2 percent with computer orders up 5.9 percent.

A negative in the report is a surprising 2.0 percent decline for vehicle orders, a disappointment that may very well be reversed in coming months based on the sustained and unusual strength of vehicle sales.

Looking at other readings, total shipments fell 0.5 percent in October which is not a good start to the fourth quarter with core capital goods shipments also down 0.5 percent. But future shipments are certain to benefit from October's orders gain. Inventories, which are widely seen as too high, did dip 0.1 percent but relative to shipments could do no more than hold steady at a ratio of 1.35. Unfilled orders are positive, ending two months of decline with a 0.3 percent gain.

New Orders and Shipments

The above chart helps with a much needed perspective on today's bounce. It could be a start, but it could be an outlier tied to the air transportation orders.

Reflections on Autos

Auto orders declined two percent which Bloomberg labeled "surprising".

Why is a decline so surprising given the "sustained and unusual strength of vehicle sales". Does Bloomberg expect "unusual strength" to continue forever?

Mike "Mish" Shedlock

Seth's Blog : Just passing through

Just passing through

Older guy walks into the service area on the parkway and asks one of the staff, "do you have a pay phone? My car broke down and I need to call my daughter."

The staff person, killing time by checking his cell phone, is confused. He's not sure what a pay phone is, then he figures it out, and says, "no," before going back to his phone.

It never occurs to him to hand the phone to the man so he can make a call.

Part of it is the boss's fault. He's not paying much attention to hiring or training or incentives. He's paying as little as he can, and turnover is high. After all, every one of his customers is just passing through, no need to care.

And that message comes through to the staff, loud and clear.

Of course, at one level, all of us are just passing through.

From a more practical, business level, the ease of digital connection means that it's more and more unlikely that you can be uncaring or mistreat people and not be noticed.

But most of all, life is better when we act like we might see someone again soon, isn't it?

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vineri, 4 decembrie 2015

Damn Cool Pics

Damn Cool Pics

Seth's Blog : Understanding the doublings

Understanding the doublings

More Recent Articles

joi, 3 decembrie 2015

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Seth's Blog : Just passing through

Just passing through

More Recent Articles

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