Who said physics profs are geeks?

For anyone that has sweat and pulled all-nighters on the road to obtaining their college degree, check out the Jan2010 issue of WIRED magazine and read “Summa Cum Fraud” (it will probably make you sick, but don’t worry, there’s a happy ending).  It details the inner workings of “diploma mills”, and how they attempt to make their “universities” appear legit – including phony university websites, phony accreditation based on bribes, etc.  George Gollin, a physics professor at the University of Illinois at U-C, had enough – starting with all the spam emails.  Over the course of several years, Gollin became obsessed with tracking down major diploma mills with a Dirty Harry like conviction.  Thanks to his reasearch, he assisted the Secret Service in shutting down several operations.  It’s an amazing story with some chilling statistics.  Below are just a couple from the article:

• The US sells approx 200,000 degrees a year to customers all over the world
• The number of fake PhD’s awarded each year = the number of REAL PhD’s awarded each year !!

I checked out Gollin’s website just for kicks: http://www.hep.uiuc.edu/home/g-gollin/higher_education.html.

Daddy the Dinosaur!

Lately my son, Rohan, likes to call me “daddy dinosaur”.  I have no idea why, maybe because it just sounds cool?  Rohan is 3 years old and currently in love with dinosaurs.  So when I came across the following article about how dinosaurs became extinct…

http://www.economist.com/sciencetechnology/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14698363

…I had to read it, because sooner or later my son is going to approach me and ask, ”where did all the dinosaurs go daddy?”.  And the last thing I want to do is be completely clueless when that fateful moment arrives.

Unfortunately, this article did not have all the answers.  But it does discuss some of the prevailing theories, as well as some new ones about asteroids that hit off the coast of India, that are very interesting.

Monopoly Killer – The Settlers of Catan

I’ve been meaning to post on this topic, ever since I read the following article in WIRED magazine:  http://www.wired.com/gaming/gamingreviews/magazine/17-04/mf_settlers. 

Fascinating article that helped me realize a couple things: 

1 – Germans are passionate (pronounced “fanatical”) about their board games, and…

2 – Creating a board game that really sizzles and captivate young/old, rich/poor, ADD/non-ADD is one of the most difficult puzzles to solze on earth

But apparently, Klaus Teuber, a former dental technician has solved the puzzle and created a “Monopoly Killer”.  Funny thing is that even though sales of this game are off the charts, most (including myself before the WIRED article) people have probably never heard of this game before.  It seems to have a “cult-like”, grass-roots following at the present, but I’m sure it will explode into the mainstream at any moment (a “tipping point” as Malcolm Gladwell would say).

I’m eager to get my hands on this game and play sometime with my family and friends…even moreso after reading my friend and Deloitte colleagues post regarding The Settlers of Catan (Sayontan Sinha: http://mynethome.net/blog/2009/08/settling-with-settlers-of-catan/).  He provides an excellent synopsis of the rules of play.  Seems somewhat complicated, but I will take his word for it that its not that bad by the second attempt. 

BTW…somewhat off topic, but if you’re ever looking to kill some time and learn some really cool and random stuff, check out Sayontan’s blog: http://mynethome.net/blog/ - it is fantastic!  A must read are his posts regarding the Harry Potter series, consultants and random rants Cheers

Random Discoveries and Favorites of 2008

Well, since I’m kicking off this blog on December 31, 2008, I thought it only fitting to reflect on some cool finds of the 2008 calendar year.  I’m sure there is a bunch of stuff I sent people via email that I can’t remember anymore, but I will give it my best shot…

Understanding the United State Government – http://www.votesmart.org/resource_govt101_02.php.  I found this site pretty helpful as I got more interested in the US political process this year.  I must admit that I did not know a lot of this information about the US Government.  It is very accessible and short enough to hold my attention.  Covers topics such as structure of Congress, Bill-to-Law process, Presidential powers, etc.

Barach Obama’s Race Relations Speech – http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/hisownwords.  In my opinion, this is one of the best politial speeches in presidential history.  In occured in the wake of all of the Reverand Jerimiah Wright controversey that overtook the news headlines for several weeks.  I think it had the potential to derail Obama’s presidential bid, but of course did not… and this speech is one of the main reasons why.  Obama, in his usual cool and unflappable way, delievers a masterfull speech that shows he is human…not a robot.

NY Times Cover: Obama is President-Elect – This cover is of course one for the ages.  My son, Rohan, will be reading about this one day in his highschool history book – and I will explain to him that it was a defining momemt in US (and hopefully World) history. 

Credit Crisis and Global Recession – http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=4546583n.  My brother, who works on Wall-Street recommended this video to me.  It does a good job of explaining a pretty complex and misunderstood topic; credit default swaps (aka credit derivatives).  They are basically “side bets” on the probability of defaults on loans, constitute a 50 trilliion $ industry, and are at the heart of the financial meltdown that we are all suffering through.  A must watch for any non-finance guy or gal imho.

Website I fell in love with in 2008:

Charlie Rose website – http://www.charlierose.com.  Every one of Rose’s interviews for the last 20+ years is archieved and viewable commerical free on this site.  Rose is the best in the business in my opinion, and the range of guests that he has cannot be matched by anyone else.  He moves effertlessly between Sports-Politics-Finance-Science-etc. like no one else.  A few of my favorite interviews of 2008 are with Salman Rushdie, Malcolm Gladwell, Magic Johnson and Thomas Friedman. 

TED Website – www.ted.com.  TED is the annual Technology, Entertainment and Design conference in California.  I’m sure it’ quite expensive to attend, but now they make all the presentations available online, which is unbelievable.  The site is a wealth of knowledge on just about any topic and draws the best and brightest from every major field of study, from Alternative Energy to Mathematics to Product Design to Media, you name it.  I love this site.  Check out the recent presentation by Malcolm Gladwell on “pasta sauce” if you get the chance. 

NetFlix Instant Viewing Service and iTunes Rental Service – www.netflix.com and www.itunes.com/movies.  If you are a Netflix member, you can now view movies instantly from their library of downloadable movies…and there is no limit.  Also, iTunes rental service is pretty cool… most new releases are only $4 to rent.  You can keep them for up to 30 days and have 24 hours to watch them once you start.  So much for Jobs saying that he feels folks only want to OWN their content.  Hopefully he starts and iTunes subscribtion music service one day… in which case I will finally buy an iPod.

Facebook - www.facebook.com.  Pretty sad that it took me this long, but I finally opened a facebook account.  It is a great service.  I have now officially decommisitioned my Friendster account.  Now that I’ve been using Facebook, I realized how lame Friendster is.  I think the only people that still use it are desi’s. 

WordPress Blogging Site – www.wordpress.com.  Finally, I give props to the site that is allowing me to create this blog right now.  Before starting a blog, I did some research into the various blog services out there and determined WordPress to be among the best and very simple to navigate and use asap.  It is 100% opensource developed, which always amazes me.  Best of all, it is integrated with my LinkedIn account.  Anything I blog on WordPress auto-syncs with LinkedIn.  This is what clinched using WordPress for me. 

Movies I loved in 2008:

• No Country for Old Men
• Batman Returns
• The Assisination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
• Seven Pounds

Books I loved in 2008:

• Kite Runner
• A Thousand Splendid Suns
• The Chopin Manuscript
• Manhunt
• The Last Lecture