Month: August 2012

The Reach of Cosmopolitan Magazine

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I’ve never read anything in Cosmpolitan Magazine, but I did appreciate Edith Zimmerman’s piece “99 Ways to Be Naughty in Kazakhstan” in The New York Times profiling the breadth and reach of the magazine:

The repetition can be a little numbing, but it may help explain how Cosmo, which is the best-selling monthly magazine in the United States, has morphed into such a global juggernaut. (“If all the Cosmo readers from around the world came together,” read a recent piece in Cosmo South Africa, “this group would form the 16th-largest country in the world.”) Through those 64 editions, the magazine now spreads wild sex stories to 100 million teens and young women (making it closer to the 12th-largest country, actually) in more than 100 nations — including quite a few where any discussion of sex is taboo. And plenty of others where reading a glossy magazine still carries cachet. (“Many girls consider a hard copy of Cosmo to be an important accessory,” says Maya Akisheva, the editor of Cosmo Kazakhstan.) As the brand proudly points out, in 2011 alone, these readers spent $1.4 billion on shoes, $400 million on cars, $2.5 billion on beauty products and $1.5 billion on fragrance and bought 24 million pairs of jeans.

Who knew Cosmo Kazakhstan was a thing?! Read the entire article here.

The World’s Highest-Paid DJs

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Forbest has a “special report” on the world’s highest paid DJs. Dutch born DJ Tiesto tops the list with earnings of $22 million, who makes an average nightly gross of $250,000. Grammy-winning California native Skrillex ranks second with $15 million, followed by Scandinavian trio Swedish House Mafia, which recently disbanded despite pulling in an estimated $14 million. French DJ David Guetta claims the No. 4 spot with $13.5 million:

Though these Electronic Cash Kings hail from all over the globe, they’ve got at least one thing in common: they all make the bulk of their money by touring. Often toting nothing more than a USB stick and a pair of Pioneer CDJs, their production costs are often negligible, unlike rockers and pop stars who typically take home just one-third of gross ticket sales.

Our estimates include earnings from these live shows—for many artists, that often means more than $100,000 for a night’s work—and from recorded music sales, endorsements, merchandise sales and, in the case of DJ Pauly D, television…

The collective total for the top 10 DJs is more than $125 million, or greater than the payroll of the Los Angeles Lakers.

Racing Against History in the 100-Meter Freestyle

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The New York Times has a really good interactive comparing the various milestones in the men’s 100-meter freestyle swim. Based on the athletes’ average speeds, if every Olympic medalist ever raced each other, France’s Alain Bernard (from the 2008 Olympic Games, with a time of 47.21 seconds) would win, with a wide distribution of Olympians behind him, including the 2012 London Olympics winner, Nathan Adrian, with a time of 47.52 seconds.

Other swimmers profiled in the interactive:

Alfréd Hajós: Hungary’s first Olympic gold medalist, Hajós swam in 55-degree open water, in the Bay of Zea outside Piraeus, Greece. He also won the 1,200-meter swim.

Johnny Weissmuller (United States): The first swimmer to break a minute in the Olympics. Later went on to play Tarzan in “Tarzan the Ape Man,” which made him internationally famous.

Mark Spitz (United States): Won seven gold medals in the 1972 Games in Munich; nearly withdrew from the 100-meter event because he wasn’t sure if he would win. (He did, setting a world record.)

Alexander Popov (Russia): One of only three athletes with three medals in this event; the first person in 68 years to win back-to-back golds after Weissmuller did it in 1928.

The two and a half minute video is worth seeing in entirety.

Comparing China and India in the Olympic Games

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Tyler Cowen and Kevin Grier write a good Olympics piece titled “How to Boost Your Medal Count in Seven Easy Steps.” The predictions at the end of the piece are excellent, but the most interesting part to me was the reasoning of how China and India will perform in the (future) Olympic Games:

Will China and India, the two countries with populations over 1 billion, dominate the Olympics of the future, especially as they become wealthier?

To date, their Olympic performances are almost polar opposites. China has become an Olympic powerhouse while India has underperformed. From 1960 to 2000, China won 80 gold medals, while India won only two. Over those 11 Olympiads, India only won eight total medals while China won over 200. While China has grown faster and is richer than India, the difference in wealth can’t begin to account for the chasm between their Olympic results.

In their book Poor Economics, MIT economists Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo attribute India’s dismal Olympic performance at least partly to very poor child nutrition. They document that rates of severe child malnutrition are much higher in India than in sub-Saharan Africa, even though most of sub-Saharan Africa is significantly poorer than India.

Even the significant segment of the Indian population that grows up healthy is at a disadvantage relative to China. The Chinese economic development model has focused on investment in infrastructure; things like massive airports, high-speed rail, hundreds of dams, and, yes, stadiums, world-class swimming pools, and high-tech athletic equipment. And while India is a boisterous democracy, China continues to be ruled by a Communist party, which still remembers the old Cold War days when athletic performance was a strong symbol of a country’s geopolitical clout.

We’re about a week into the 2012 Olympic Games. What’s your over/under for total medals for China and India?

Stocks Perform Better If Women Are On Company Boards

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Heather Perlberg  for Bloomberg reports:

Shares of companies with a market capitalization of more than $10 billion and with women board members outperformed comparable businesses with all-male boards by 26 percent worldwide over a period of six years, according to a report by the Credit Suisse Research Institute, created in 2008 to analyze trends expected to affect global markets.

Net income growth for companies with women on their boards has averaged 14 percent over the past six years, compared with 10 percent for those with no female director, according to the Credit Suisse study, which examined all the companies in the MSCI ACWI Index.

The analysis doesn’t apply to IPOs, as evidenced by Facebook’s decline. Facebook appointed Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg as its first female director about a month after its May initial public offering; the stock is down nearly 50% since the $38 initial public offering in May.

The Knight Capital “Glitch”

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Yesterday, The Knight Capital Group lost $440 million when it sold all the stocks it accidentally bought Wednesday morning because of a “computer glitch.” According to Dealbook:

The losses are greater than the company’s revenue in the second quarter of this year, when it brought in $289 million.

The company said the problems happened because of new trading software that had been installed. The event was the latest to draw attention to the potentially destabilizing effect of the computerized trading that has increasingly dominated the nation’s stock markets.

Until this week, Knight had been one of the biggest beneficiaries of the evolution of the market, helping clients trade in and out of stocks at high speeds.

The glitch occurred over a span of 45 minutes, during which Knight Capital lost $10 million per minute. The stock tumbled 30% yesterday and is down 60% today to a low of $2.75/share.

For a specific glance at the stocks that were affected yesterday, check out this blog post. The blog post begins appropriately “What follows should strike you as crazy. If it doesn’t, read it again, because it is.”

Incredible how much value can be wiped out in a company because someone on the High Frequency Trading desk didn’t do his/her homework.

The Lucrative World of Cardboard Theft

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John Metcalfe writes on the lucrative world of cardboard theft at The Atlantic Cities:

The thieves…drive in trucks rented from U-Haul and Penske or even unmarked Econolines. They cruise slowly down the street manhandling bales of cardboard into the vehicles. Or they’ll dodge behind a large store like Costco to retrieve spoils left outside by the Dumpsters.

It may sound like a tedious way to earn a living, but it’s quite suitable for folks who like a good workout and fast payouts. “You rent a van and drive down Second Avenue [in Manhattan] or Atlantic in Brooklyn, you pick up a ton and a half of cardboard and get paid 150 bucks for it,” says Biderman. “Do that twice a night and you’re doing OK.”

Sometimes, as in the case with three men busted recently in New Jersey, recyclers will allegedly form a front business (“Metro Paper Inc.”) to support their cardboard ring. A favored tactic of this particular heist squad, according to the authorities, was to back their vehicles up to stores while pretending to be licensed haulers. With nobody on the loading docks apparently questioning their authority, they’re suspected to have made off with 900 tons of cardboard in just three months this year, a weight that represents $103,000 in free money.

The cardboard theft isn’t centered just in New York… There have been incidents in Virginia, Connecticut, Georgia, and Florida.

Read the comments for some controversy regarding the article.

Remembering Gore Vidal Through His Quotes

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Gore Vidal, author, playwright,essayist, screenwriter, and political activist, has passed away at age 86. The Telegraph has an obituary of the man, but I liked this compilation of Gore Vidal quotes:

On US politicians:

The United States was founded by the brightest people in the country – and we haven’t seen them since.

On the US electorate:

Half of the American people have never read a newspaper. Half never voted for President. One hopes it is the same half.

On Ronald Reagan:

He is not clear about the difference between Medici and Gucci. He knows Nancy wears one of them.

On John F Kennedy:

He was one of the most charming men I’ve ever known. He was also one of the very worst Presidents.

On political speeches:

In America, if you want a successful career in politics, there is one subject you must never mention, and that is politics. If you talk about standing tall, and it’s morning in America, and you press the good-news buttons, you’re fine. If you talk about budgets, tax reform, bigotry, and so on, you are in trouble. So if we aren’t going to talk issues, what can we talk about? Well, the sex lives of the candidates, because that is about the most meaningless thing that you can talk about.

On the press:

A writer must always tell the truth, unless he is a journalist.

On art and politics:

There is something about a bureaucrat that does not like a poem.

On style:

Style is knowing who you are, what you want to say and not giving a damn.

On looks:

A narcissist is someone better looking than you are.

On adolescence:

Until the rise of American advertising, it never occurred to anyone anywhere in the world that the teenager was a captive in a hostile world of adults.

On jealousy:

Whenever a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies.

On the death of the novel:

You hear all this whining going on, ‘Where are our great writers?’ The thing I might feel doleful about is: ‘Where are the readers?'” (Read more at Esquire)

On ageing:

At a certain age, you have to live near good medical care — if, that is, you’re going to continue. You always have the option of not continuing, which, I fear, is sometimes nobler.

On the secret to a happy life:

Never pass up a chance to have sex or appear on television.

Read more here.

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Trivia: Gore Vidal’s first name was Eugene.

The Swimming Photographers at the Olympic Games

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The New York Times has a nice profile of the photographers at the Olympic Games who bring us the underwater images. I had no idea they were certified scuba divers!

Sports photographers who shoot underwater used to free-dive to make these adjustments; now many, including Bello, Rose and Pretty, are certified scuba divers. That has given them the comfort of extended time underwater to perfect the art of capturing the world’s best swimmers from below. But it also leads to an odd sight every night at the London Aquatics Centre: a glass-and-plastic reef composed of 10 cameras and a platoon of frogmen who enter the pool soon after the last race to tend to them.

Preparation is everything:

Preparation is everything. Each camera has to be set up to focus on a specific race, or perhaps two lanes where a close finish is expected. Sometimes a camera will wait all day for a specific swimmer to splash into frame.

They use a handheld trigger to operate the shutter. It’s connected, via cable, to the camera at the bottom of the pool. Now that cameras are all digital, almost as soon as they are taken, the images can be viewed on a laptop.

Also worth reading is this post on Rob Galbraith’s blog, who interviewed Clive Rose before the Olympics on his camera equipment and set-up:

We [Getty Images] have been working with Canon on an underwater photography solution for the London Olympics for some time now, so we were lucky enough to be able to use a pre-production EOS-1D X with the new EF 8-15mm f/4L Fisheye USM lens during the test event. This was packed inside a prototype custom built waterproof housing. 

The EOS-1D X isn’t even available yet (or wasn’t then), so getting a housing to fit was one of the many challenges that we’ve had to deal with. The housing is connected via hardwire cables that run from the back of the housing along the pool floor to a laptop at poolside. There, we can use Live View to adjust the camera settings to suit which kind of shot we want. The camera is powered (always on) and connected to an Ethernet cable to allow us to draw the images up in real time. We can fire the camera either via the laptop through the Live View software, or hook the camera up to a trigger cable and attach the end of that to a PocketWizard, much the same way as you would for any other remote camera.

 

Bruce Schneier on Spectacular vs. Ordinary Events

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Bruce Schneier, technology expert and author of Liars and Outliers, has a good, well-reasoned op-ed piece in CNN titled “Drawing the Wrong Lessons from Horrific Events.” He reminds us that human brains aren’t very good at probability and risk analysis. We tend to exaggerate the strange and rare events, and downplay the ordinary, familiar, and common ones. We think rare risks are more common than they are. We fear them more than probability indicates we should.

And who are the major storytellers these days? Television and the Internet. So when news programs and sites endlessly repeat the story from Aurora, with interviews with those in the theater, interviews with the families and commentary by anyone who has a point to make, we start to think this is something to fear, rather than a rare event that almost never happens and isn’t worth worrying about. In other words, reading five stories about the same event feels somewhat like five separate events, and that skews our perceptions.

We see the effects of this all the time.

It’s strangers by whom we fear being murdered, kidnapped, raped and assaulted, when it’s far more likely that any perpetrator of such offenses is a relative or a friend. We worry about airplane crashes and rampaging shooters instead of automobile crashes and domestic violence — both of which are far more common and far, far more deadly.

If you want to continue reading on this topic, I highly recommend Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s Fooled by Randomness.