patrissimo: Women aren't in science because...

Patrissimo's explanation on why women aren't in science is right on, I think. Personally, I think too many men try to appear superior and stay ahead with their peer that they end up picking the wrong battle to fight. Or put it another way: men often want to continue to feel good about their accomplishments, or refuse to admit their wrong career choices, that they end up making the wrong decision for the wrong reason. That's why many men got into the wrong kind of jobs in the first place, and are afraid to get out because doing so will amount to admitting their failure.

Library of Economics and Liberty: The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics

Library of Economics and Liberty: The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics is a good site for tons of information on Economics. For example, I just read the article on the "Philips Curve" that explains the relationship between unemployment rate, monetary supply and inflation. No wonder during the late 90's when the unemployment rate got too low, everyone got nervous that inflation rate will just start to rise sharply.

Drive Image XML

DriveImage XML is a great program for backing up or restoring hard drives. Best of all, it's free.

Berkeley physicist jolted awake by news of Nobel

This MercuryNews.com article talks about how the Berkeley physicist learned the news of his receiving the Nobel Prize in physics. Kind of funny.

Hack Attack: Top 10 Ubuntu apps and tweaks - Lifehacker

Hack Attack has an article on "Top 10 Ubuntu apps and tweaks". Ubuntu is probably the most popular Linux distro these days. One of these days I'm going to install it on my PC and give it a try.

» More on Excel in-cell graphing - Juice Analytics

This is just so cool: »Excel in-cell graphing allows you to capture the numerical magnitude of different cells at a glance.

Free Business Books

Someone compiled a list of free business books on accounting, economics, mathematics, statistics, Exce.. This should be pretty useful.

RipIt4Me Guide - A freeware utility that helps you backup your copy protected DVDs

RipIt4Me is a freeware utility that helps you backup your copy protected DVDs. People have been running into trouble using DVDshrink to "backup" their "own" DVDs recently due to updated copy protection scheme employed by new DVD releases, so this will surely come in handy.

CodeFromThe70s.org

CodeFromThe70s.org has a cool article on how to reinstall your Windows XP without fear of losing old applications or productivity during the transition. The basic idea is to back up the system partition into a spare drive, create a new virtual machine under VMWare and boot into it, and restore the backup image of your old configuration into that virtual machine. This way when you wipe your system clean and reinstall Windows XP, you don't have to fear losing important stuff anymore! What a clever idea.

Signum sine tinnitu--by Guy Kawasaki: After the Honeymoon

Another great article by Guy Kawasaki on start-ups after the honeymoon. After working at two start-ups from the very first day, I can stay firsthand that this guy's observation is dead on.

WSJ.com - Price Gouging Is Bad Medicine

WSJ.com - Price Gouging Is Bad Medicine: "Price Gouging Is Bad Medicine
By ALEX TABARROK
May 20, 2006; Page A9

In what has become a biannual ritual, the Senate last week voted down medical malpractice reform. Reasonable minds might differ on the merits of federal legislation, but one thing's for certain: Medical malpractice insurance premiums are at an all-time high, and physicians are responding by retiring early, practicing more defensive medicine, and switching into less litigious specialties.

What's less certain, at least in the public debate, has been the cause of high insurance premiums. Doctors, led by the American Medical Association, attribute 'rapidly increasing medical liability insurance premiums' to 'escalating jury awards.' Sen. Ted Kennedy, however, opposes federal reform because, as he told the New York Times, 'the explanation for these premium spikes can be found not in legislative halls or courtrooms, but in boardrooms.' His complaint echoes assertions by trial lawyers and their allied consumer groups like Americans for Insurance Reform that 'price gouging' by wicked insurance companies is to blame for premium increases.

On its face, price gouging is a peculiar explanation for recent increases in insurance premiums. Is greed new to the world? Were insurance companies followers of Mother Teresa just a few years ago? If greed and gouging are the explanations for rising premiums, why did the St. Paul group -- one of the nation's largest suppliers of medical malpractice insurance -- pull out of the market in 2001? Were the profits from all that gouging just too much for St. Paul's guilty conscience? And consider that almost half of doctors are insured through mutual, i.e., doctor-owned, insurance companies. Are the doctors gouging themselves?

The gouging explanation fails more than the credulity test. Price gouging can work only if firms have monopoly power -- so if gouging is the explanation for higher premiums, we would expect to see higher premiums in states with less competition. My student, Amanda Agan, and I tested this hypothesis in a study released two days ago by the Manhattan Institute. Contrary to the gouging hypothesis, we found that a 10% increase in industry concentration reduces premiums by $2,200. The result makes sense if we remember that, to increase market share, firms don't raise prices but rather lower them. Wal-Mart has grown into the nation's dominant retailer by lowering prices, not raising them.

If greedy insurance companies are not to blame for medical malpractice premium increases, perhaps it's foolish insurance companies. When it's not blaming price gouging, Americans for Insurance Reform says that mismanaged investments and not the legal system are responsible for the most recent uptick in the "insurance cycle." It is true that the insurance market periodically enters into times of crisis followed by times of relative quiet. The insurance cycle, however, is not an independent cause of higher premiums; it's a natural consequence of the uncertainty of the liability system.

Over the long run, insurance companies must cover their costs, so increases in premiums track increases in tort awards. As we show in our study, during the last 30 years every dollar increase in awards has led to a dollar increase in premiums. But tort awards are very difficult to predict because past awards tell us very little about future awards. Insurance companies, therefore, have a difficult job: They must predict future awards based on just a handful of the most recent awards. Was the latest multimillion dollar award a signal of permanently higher costs, or was it just a blip? Is tort reform working or were the more reasonable awards of the last year just a pause in the long upward trend?

Given the difficulty of forecasting awards, it's no surprise that insurance companies sometimes make mistakes. As a result, insurance companies can price premiums based upon a projection of future awards that are too low.

You never hear critics of the industry complaining of low prices, but we now know that prices in the 1990s were not high enough to cover the increase in tort awards. Recent increases in premiums are simply a belated recognition of the reality of what appears to be permanently higher medical malpractice awards. Since the insurance cycle is a function of the uncertainty of tort awards, not an independent cause of higher prices, the best way to dampen premium variation is to make tort awards more predictable.

In addition to being highly variable, medical malpractice insurance premiums are creating problems because they are simply too high, at least in some parts of the country. Our study examines how tort awards, like malpractice premiums, are much higher in some states than in others -- for reasons having little to do with medical malpractice. For example, awards per doctor are approximately $10,000 in Pennsylvania but just $1,668 in Wisconsin. Is medical malpractice really six times worse in Pennsylvania than in Wisconsin? More plausibly, the reasons for Pennsylvania's higher awards are found in legal and cultural differences, including the Keystone state's elected judges and the redistributive fervor of the Philadelphia jury.

States with partisan elected judges, for example, have medical malpractice awards per claim that are $36,000 higher than in other states. It's also well-known that the Philadelphia jury, like its cousin the Bronx jury, likes to redistribute the wealth. Between 1999 and 2001 there were 87 verdicts over $1 million in Philadelphia, almost as many as in all of California (101).

The way to fix broken medical malpractice systems, like Pennsylvania's, is to address the underlying problems of the tort system -- whether through federal statute, state legislation or judicial oversight. Pointing fingers at the insurance industry for price gouging or mismanagement may help trial lawyers block reform, but these accusations make little sense and are not supported by the data. As Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously said, "While all men are entitled to their own opinions, they are not entitled to their own facts."

Mr. Tabarrok, associate professor of economics at George Mason University, is the author, with Amanda Agan, of "Medical Malpractice Awards, Insurance and Negligence: Which Are Related?" and the coauthor, with Eric Helland, of "Judge and Jury: American Tort Law on Trial" (Independent Institute, 2006).

Stellarium

Found a real cool open source planetarium program called Stellarium. Runs on both Linux and Windows, too! Should try it out over the weekend.

101 Free Games: The Best Free Games on the Web from 1UP.com

This is cool too: 1UP.com is running a special report of the best 101 free games on the web.

Acid-Play: 717 Freeware Games

Just discovered this website: Acid-Play, which has a whole bunch of free games. Once I find my high-pay low-stress dream job, I can start playing them at work. Ha!

Linux.com | First look at Vim 7

Vim is my favorite text editor by far, offering nice features such as syntax highlighting, multi-window view, unlimited undo, scripting and other customization, code folding, and many more. Now Vim7 adds another useful feature: tabbed interface for handling multiple opened files. Linux.com offers a First look at Vim 7. Hope someone will offer Redhat RPM package soon.

Transcript of Stephen Colbert Speech at White House Coorespondents Dinner

This is hilarious: Stephen Colbert made fun of George W. Bush and the "free press of America" in front of the man and the press themselves. Some guy posted the complete transcript. My favorite quote: "And as excited as I am to be here with the president, I am appalled to be surrounded by the liberal media that is destroying America, with the exception of Fox News.
Fox News gives you both sides of every story, the President's side and the Vice President's side." Hahaha.

Locura™ Personal Personal Media Server

One more good reason to buy a PSP: Locura™ Personal Personal Media Server streams audio and video files stored on your PC to your PSP for playback. Sounds like an ideal solution to viewing all the videos stored on my PC in the comfort of a living sofa.

Guy Kawasaki: My Ten Favorite Books

Guy Kawasaki gave a list of his Ten Favorite Books. I'm ashamed to admit that I've never read any one of them. Well, I've read the book "Influence: the psychology of persuasion" written by the same author as the first book on the list, on the same subject. Don't know how much overlap there is between the two.

TOWARDS THE END - From Feline Old Age Through To Pet Bereavement

TOWARDS THE END - From Feline Old Age Through To Pet Bereavement is a useful article on caring for older cats. Rocky is turning 14 today, so we don't really know how much time he has left with us. He appears healthy now, though. Hope we can still enjoy a lot of quality time together.

Garden California

Garden California is a nice website containing lots of tips on gardening. It's very useful for a novice like me :)

How to Prevent a Bozo Explosion

Another good article by Guy Kawasaki at How to Prevent a Bozo Explosion. The first part was talking about how to identify the trend that your company is turning from a lean, mean fighting machine into mediocracy. The second part is better: it offers lots of sound management advices when the company is in the rapid growth phase. Here are them:

• Insist that managers hire better than themselves


• Eradicate arrogance


• Understaff


• Undergrow


• Look beyond the resume


• Diversify


• Merge and purge

The Venture Capitalist Wishlist

Another nice article by Guy Kawasaki: The Venture Capitalist Wishlist. I think the most important point is to under promise and over deliver. Read the article yourself.

The Art of Recruiting, Part II

Another good article at Guy Kawasaki's blog. This one talks about how an ideal recruiting session should be conducted. The quality of the interviewers is as important as the company itself in attracting prospects. See The Art of Recruiting, Part II.

By Guy Kawasaki: Nine Questions to Ask a Startup

In Nine Questions to Ask a Startup by Guy Kawasaki, he listed some questions that are too common-sense, but he did provide some guidelines regarding the options you can expect from a 15-employee, post 1st round startup in terms of ownership percentage. For architect: 1~1.5%. For VP: 1.5~3%. And these are options, i.e. free ownerships.

TechCrunch » Web 2.0 Companies I Couldn’t Live Without

Found a page over at TechCrunch that contains a list of some awesome Web2.0 websites that I not know about. These websites use the new AJAX technology to provide a dramatically different user experience over the web. Some examples of AJAX include Gmail, Google Map, the new Yahoo mail, Flickr and so on. See TechCrunch » Web 2.0 Companies I Couldn’t Live Without.

暴风影音

The official homepage of Storm Codec is here.

Never Own Your Home Outright.

Kathy forwarded me the following article that puts a new perspective on home mortgage. See Never Own Your Home Outright.

Foxit Free PDF Reader

Foxit is a free PDF reader that's really fast and small. Startup is instantaneous compared with hours by Acrobat PDF reader :)

Microsoft founder too rich for tax computer to handle - Yahoo! News

Bill Gates is so rich that IRS's computer cannot handle his tax return! That's surely a nice problem to have... See this: Microsoft founder too rich for tax computer to handle - Yahoo! News

CARSCOOP: Lexus ES 2007

CARSCOOP: Lexus ES 2007 shows some spy shots of (of course) 2007 Lexus ES. Too my disappointment, it looks remarkably similar to 2007 Camry, and the dash design is kind of strange. Need to wait till more pictures show up before I make up my mind...

The Worst Day Ever - A 24 writer talks about torture, terrorism, and fudging "real time." By James Surowiecki

Cool article over at Slate that interviews a 24 (which is the coolest TV show ever) writer. See The Worst Day Ever - A 24 writer talks about torture, terrorism, and fudging "real time." By James Surowiecki.

Boing Boing: Knife-block shaped like a human head

This is so cool and scary. See Boing Boing: Knife-block shaped like a human head

Maximum PC: Silverstone FP53

Maximum PC: Silverstone FP53 reviews the hard drive cooler made by SilverStone. Seems like an ideal solution for my home-brewed PC.

Stupidest quote from Bill Walton

Go to this article for the stupidest quote I've ever read from an NBA analyst (or anybody). It's supposedly about why jump ball makes basketball the world's most perfect game. The logic is beyond me.

Feline Leukemia Virus - Overview, Risk Factors & Transmission - AnimalHealthChannel

This website, Feline Leukemia Virus - Overview, Risk Factors & Transmission - AnimalHealthChannel, contains extensive information regarding Feline Leukemia. Hopefully Rocky is not infected by it...

Video/Imaging DesignLine |Modeo mobile TV hits the screens at CES

Turns out Modeo belongs to Crown Castle, not Comcast. See the EE Times article: Video/Imaging DesignLine |Modeo mobile TV hits the screens at CES

Let the Good Times Roll by Guy Kawasaki: The Top Ten Lies of Venture Capitalists

Also a good read: Let the Good Times Roll by Guy Kawasaki: The Top Ten Lies of Venture Capitalists

Let the Good Times Roll by Guy Kawasaki: The Top Ten Lies of Entrepreneurs

This is a good read: Let the Good Times Roll by Guy Kawasaki: The Top Ten Lies of Entrepreneurs

Toshiba Gigabeat S portable media center with 2.4-inch QVGA LCD - Engadget

I saw this at CES 2006: Toshiba Toshiba Gigabeat S portable media center with 2.4-inch QVGA LCD may very well be my next portable media player. Looks very sleek and it's not an iPOD! How about that?