SAN DIEGO – Sheldon Dorf, who founded the world famous Comic-Con International comic book convention, has died. He was 76.

A longtime friend, Greg Koudoulian, says the Ocean Beach resident died at a San Diego hospital on Tuesday from kidney failure. He had diabetes and had been hospitalized for about a year.
Dorf, a freelance artist and comic strip letterer, founded Comic-Con in San Diego in 1970 after moving from Detroit.

Today, the convention draws 125,000 fans a year and is a major gathering for comic book fans, artists, writers and movie stars.

Koudoulian says Dorf was friends with comic greats such as Marvel artist Jack Kirby and “Peanuts” creator Charles Schulz. He says Dorf was also instrumental in helping budding artists find audiences.

Farewell, Mr. Dorf. Hopefully you enjoy yourself in the great comic book convention in the sky…

But it’s good to know that, despite the sophisticated computational engine which underlies it, Wolfram Alpha hasn’t forgotten its “ancestor” the abacus, a tool used by many cultures before the dawn of the electronics age.

Like a respectful child, Wolfram Alpha pays respects to its ancestors with a feature which allows you to see how any number would be represented in abacus form. Case in point, I entered the search string “abacus 24” into the Wolfram Alpha engine (because I turned 24 last week) and got:

Abacus 2.0?

(Image credit – abacus)(results from Wolfram Alpha engine)

Thankfully, I had the email contact of one of the training coordinators and she pointed me to this little gem. I was pretty surprised to find out it was from the Veronicas, as I haven’t really liked any of their other songs. Probably the strings and the ridiculously fast beats (176 beats per minute!)?

“Alalalala alalalala”

1. Good enough performance in one area for a certain segment of users (i.e. laptops were generally good enough to run simple productivity applications)
2. Very strong performance on an unrelated feature which eventually will become very important for more than one small niche (i.e. laptops were portable, desktops were not, and that became very important as consumers everywhere started demanding laptops)
3. Have the potential to improve by leveraging their industry learning curve to the point where they can compete head-to-head with an existing product (i.e. laptops now can be as fast if not faster than most desktops)

But, while most people think of Christensen’s findings as applied to product and technology shifts, this model of how innovations overtake one another can be just as easily applied to business models.

A great example of this lies in the semiconductor industry. For years, the dominant business model for semiconductor companies was the Integrated Device Manufacturer (IDM) model – a business model whereby semiconductor companies both designed and manufactured their own product. The primary benefit of this was tighter integration of design and manufacturing. Semiconductor manufacturing is highly sophisticated, requiring all sorts of specialized processes and chemicals and equipment, and there are a great deal of intricacies between one’s designs and one’s manufacturing process. Having both design and manufacturing under one roof allowed IDMs to create better products more quickly as they were able to exploit the interplays between design and manufacturing and more readily correct problems as they arose. IDMs were also able to tweak their manufacturing processes to push specific features, letting IDMs differentiate their products from their peers.

But, a new semiconductor model emerged in the early 1990s – the fabless model. Unlike the IDM model, fabless companies don’t own their own semiconductor factories (called fabs – hence the name “fabless”) and outsource their manufacturing to either IDMs with spare manufacturing capacity or dedicated contract manufacturers called foundries (the two largest of which are based in Taiwan).

At first, the industry scoffed at the fabless model. After all, these companies could not tightly link their designs to manufacturing, had to rely on the spare capacity of IDMs (who would readily take it away if they needed it) or on foundries in Taiwan, China, and Singapore which lagged the leading IDMs in manufacturing capability by several years.

But, the key to Christensen’s disruptive innovation model is not that the “new” is necessarily better than the “old,” but that it is good enough on one dimension and great on other, more important dimensions. So, while fabless companies were at first unable to keep up in terms of bleeding edge manufacturing technology with the dominant IDMs, the fabless model had a significant cost advantage (due to fabless companies not needing to build and operate expensive fabs) and strategic advantage, as their management could focus their resources and attention on building the best designs rather than also worrying about running a smooth manufacturing setup.

The result? Fabless companies like Xilinx, NVIDIA, Qualcomm, and Broadcom took the semiconductor industry by storm, growing rapidly and bringing their allies, the foundries, along with them to achieve technological parity with the leading IDMs. This model has been so successful that, today, much of the semiconductor space is either fabless or pursuing a fab-lite model (where they outsource significant volumes to foundries, while holding on to a few fabs only for certain products), and TSMC, the world’s largest foundry, is considered to be on par in manufacturing technology with the last few leading IDMs (i.e. Intel and Samsung). This gap has been closed so impressively, in fact, that former IDM-technology leaders like Texas Instruments and Fujitsu have now decided to rely on TSMC for their most advanced manufacturing technology.

To use Christensen’s logic: the fabless model was “good enough” on manufacturing technology for a niche of semiconductor companies, but great in terms of cost. This cost advantage helped the fabless companies and their allies, the foundries, to quickly move up the learning curve and advance in technological capability to the point where they disrupted the old IDM business model.

This type of disruptive business model innovation is not limited to the semiconductor industry. A couple of weeks ago The Economist ran a great series of articles on the mobile phone “ecosystem” in emerging markets. The entire time while I was reading it, I was struck by the numerous ways in which the rise of the mobile phone in emerging markets was creating disruptive business models. One in particular caught my eye as something which was very similar to the fabless semiconductor model story: the so-called “Indian model” of managing a mobile phone network.

Traditional Western/Japanese mobile phone carriers like AT&T and Verizon set up very expensive networks using equipment that they purchase from telecommunications equipment providers like Nokia-Siemens, Alcatel-Lucent, and Ericsson. (In theory,) the carriers are able to invest heavily in their own networks to roll out new services and new coverage because they own their own networks and because they are able to charge customers, on average, ~$50/month. These investments (in theory) produce better networks and services which reinforce their ability to charge premium dollar on a per customer basis.

In emerging markets, this is much harder to pull off since customers don’t have enough money to pay $50/month. The “Indian model”, which began in emerging countries like India, is a way for carriers in  low-cost countries to adapt to the cost constraints imposed by the inability of customers to pay high $50/month bills, and is generally thought to consist of two pieces. The first involves having multiple carriers share large swaths of network infrastructure, something which many Western carriers shied away from due to intellectual property fears and questions of who would pay for maintenance/traffic/etc. Another plank of the “Indian model” is to outsource network management to equipment providers (Ericsson helped to pioneer this model, in much the same way that the foundries helped the first fabless companies take off) — again, something traditional carrier shied away from given the lack of control a firm would have over its own infrastructure and services.

Just as in the fabless semiconductor company case, this low-cost network management business model has many risks, but it has enabled carriers in India, Africa, and Latin America to focus on getting and retaining customers, rather than building expensive networks. The result? We’re starting to see some Western carriers adopt “Indian model” style innovations. One of the most prominent examples of this is Sprint’s deal to outsource its day-to-day network operations to Ericsson! Is this a sign that the “Indian model” might disrupt the traditional carrier model? Only time will tell, but I wouldn’t be surprised.

(Image credit) (Image credit – Foundry market share) (Image credit – mobile users via Economist)

The product is from Thumbs Up! and apparently, after plugging it into someone’s computer, will erratically turn on and off the caps lock, type out random text, and make random mouse movement. Better, still:

“Handily, the Prankster features a time delay setting, so that after installing it, you can make your getaway safely before it starts misbehaving.”

Glad to see they were thinking ahead. Thankfully, this is meant more to be a nuisance than a security risk, as its designed not to hit “Enter” or open/close files:

“The Prankster is highly annoying, but it’ll never activate the ‘enter’ key or close or save documents, so it’s mostly mischievous, not super-dangerous.”

Even so, to cover themselves morally (and possibly legally?), they note:

“However, it probably shouldn’t be used on computers that control nuclear reactors, security systems for genetically recreated dinosaur parks and/or zombie experimentation units, captured alien spacecraft or freezers packed with delicious ice cream.”

And all only for 20 British pounds!

(Image source – Thumbs Up)

Completely ignoring my last post on the dangers of being obsessed with graphs, here is a very cool graph on how US population demographics will evolve over time as taken from the Calculated Risk blog (HT: Jeff L). In particular, I find the “Baby Boom” bulge (the wave of youngsters that came of age beginning from 1950-1970) moving towards the right to be very illuminating:

It highlights a trend which Japan is only beginning to grapple with – the “graying” of the American population that comes with the Baby Boomers becoming older. If Japan is any indication, that means the US will see a few things:

• Rise in pension/Social Security costs and payments for care for the elderly
• Decline in average wages as fewer lower-paid and younger workers replace more retiring higher-paid workers
• Socio-economic changes that come from a smaller working-class population which needs to support a larger elderly population
• Change in the political system as a balance will be sought between a growing importance in the elderly vote and the need for governments/companies to change the pension/healthcare payment balance and the ability of medical science to extend the workable years for elderly individuals
• Change in business world as the elderly become more tech-savvy and become a more significant piece of the consumer population

If I were a business-owner looking at the long-term, I’d be looking long and hard at this list, and making investments into understanding how to convert these broad social/economic/political trends into insights which I can use to create a competitive advantage. For instance, if I were working in corporate strategy at Facebook, I’d be thinking of:

• ways to make the site more attractive for the new generation of tech-savvy elderly
• how to make my social network asset more valuable for elderly users (e.g. ways to make it easier to connect with old friends or family, ways to create mentoring relationships between older, more experience users and younger, less experienced ones, etc)
• how to get useful ads that the elderly are more likely to pay attention to

Any other ideas on how things will change because of the demographic shift, and how businesses might adapt to them?

(Image credit)

Symptoms include excessive desire to represent every decision and factoid in life in simple chart form, especially in PowerPoint slide form. Treatment: long vacation with deep exposure to how people actually talk and relate to other humans.

The first is that I’ve been very impressed with President Obama’s efforts. This may come as a shock to my more liberal friends who have been reading my Google Reader shares on the subject, many of which have been critical of Obama’s plans. But, as someone who was not terribly impressed with Hillary Clinton’s efforts in healthcare in the 1990s, I have been pleasantly surprised by the different strategy that Obama has taken. At least from this blogger’s perspective, Obama’s process has been much more open, allowing the plan to receive input and win support from the numerous groups which need to be won over (i.e. pharmaceutical companies, doctors and nurses, insurance companies, hospitals, etc), and much more driven by Congress rather than force-fed from the Executive Branch.

The result? In my opinion, a much more nuanced policy than what I’m used to hearing from pie-in-the-sky single-payer advocates and market fundamentalists with a promising focus on addressing access and cost concerns with a combination of regulatory/government directives and market-based methods.

The second is around the balance between using government initiatives and using private markets to solve the US’s healthcare problems. I tend to be biased towards the latter, given my lack of faith in the ability of central organizations to solve the coordination, innovation, pricing, and customization challenges which markets are more adept at solving. With that said, anyone who is not a free-market fundamentalist is probably also aware of the coordination challenges that markets face (i.e. one of the reasons why we don’t trust the market to be entirely responsible for national defense or international treaties) and the blindness to equality/access concerns that markets can have.

From that perspective, I think the Obama plan does a relatively good job of balancing the two. After all, I can list at least two “market failures” that are abound in the American healthcare system:

1. One can probably assign blame for many of our current complaints about American healthcare to the fact that there is a very poor market for health insurance (David Leonhardt at the NYTimes does). After all, why would insurance providers increase quality while lowering cost when most US healthcare coverage decisions are made by employers who don’t have the incentive or the information to shop around between plans and the fact that, in many markets, there are very few insurance companies who a consumer can choose between.
2. Holding concerns of access aside, not enough people get health insurance. This is true for three reasons. First, people oftentimes underestimate the “safety net” that they may actually need to deal with sudden illnesses and accidents. Without the bargaining power of a large health insurance company on your side, the costs of seeing a doctor and obtaining treatment are astronomical – something which many uninsured find out when they suddenly need treatment. Second, the fact that the uninsured are able to still get government-funded care or emergency room care, while morally praiseworthy, means that extra costs are added to our healthcare system (and hence our insurance premiums and copays) which could be avoided had those individuals originally been covered. Finally, there are a number of conditions (e.g. breast cancer) which are more easily and cheaply dealt with if detected and treated earlier. Individuals without health insurance oftentimes are less likely to find and treat these conditions early on, resulting in greater costs and more difficult problems for doctors to treat.

That Obama is pushing for a regulated “insurance exchange” and a requirement that all individuals have health coverage is, to me, a step in the right direction to addressing these two issues. The devil is of course in the details, but the fact that Obama is leaning towards these provisions is very encouraging.

I am much less enthusiastic about the “public option” that has been thrown around because I don’t believe it manages the public/private divide very well. The theory is that the government will step in and provide coverage to individuals who are not happy with any of the options on the table with the hope that this “public option” will help “keep the insurance companies honest.” While the theory is appealing on the level that everyone would like to have an extra safety net which helps to prevent market failures, I think the “public option” idea is based on a flawed premise.

There are three possibilities that I can envision for the public option. The first is a world where the initiatives that Obama is proposing create a strong market for insurance. In that case, in the same way that the low prices in the used car market cause a self-fulfilling doom loop where they attract only bad cars (the “lemon problem”), the public option will doom itself to be a high cost, inefficient solution that attracts all the patients which insurance companies don’t want to cover (e.g. those with difficult pre-existing medical conditions).

The second and third possibility that I can see have the same outcome. Either Obama’s market initiatives fail to create a strong market for insurance or the a strong market is created, but to bolster the public option, the government heavily subsidizes the public option and protects it from competition from the private sector. In both cases, the result is that insurance companies are unable to compete with the government plan, resulting in the market for insurance becoming even less robust than it is today, effectively converting the health insurance market into a single-payer model whereby the government takes on all health care. I’ve discussed many reasons why this would be undesirable, but the two biggest ones that come to mind are governments being generally bad at innovation (due to central planning being notoriously bad at allocating resources between different uncertain technologies) and the politicization of the rationing of healthcare rather than relying on medical and personal factors.

In all three cases, the public option not only leads to undesirable costs, but distracts the government from the solution which should be implemented: creating a strong insurance market with good options for consumers and using subsidies/regulations to expand coverage. That’s the only solution that provides the coverage, the level of cost, and quality of care that we want.

The final thought that I had revolved around additional steps which I hope the Obama plan will eventually take. I outlined them in a previous post I made on healthcare policy, but they include two things:

• Universal coverage for children – Morally and practically (as there’s no better way to improve the long-term health of the country by making sure that children at an early age are vaccinated, have routine checkups, and are taught good health habits), I see no reason why every child should get quality healthcare coverage.
• Making health insurance actually act like insurance – “Health insurance” is only insurance in name, not practice. You don’t expect your car insurance to pay for every tune-up and every time you fill up at the gas station. Why should you expect your health insurance to pay for every drug and every visit to the doctor’s office? The fact that so much of this payment is handled by someone else means that individuals don’t need to control their own healthcare costs, which makes insurance premiums higher for everyone. This fact also means that insurance ceases to be the “safety net” that protects you from catastrophic losses that its supposed to be, but instead becomes a significant drag on your earnings potential.

It is certainly an exciting time for anyone interested in healthcare policy, and hopefully, we leave this process with a set of initiatives and proposals which make us all better off.
(Image credit – Dr. Obama) (Image credit – Flag + stethoscope) (Image credit – Public Option pin)

I personally am in favor of using such tools, as they allow a classroom to extend beyond simply learning how to do basic procedures to looking at real-world problems which are far harder and far more interesting than the simple “toy problems” which classrooms requiring all work to be done “old school” are limited to. But, even I have to say that the latest blog post by Wolfram|Alpha makes this supporter of new technical tools in classrooms a little wary.

Over on the Bench Press blog, we’ve posted a couple of times on the power of the new “computational knowledge engine” Wolfram|Alpha (brought to you by the makers of Mathematica) and its ability to help provide contextual medical and astronomical information, in addition to answers to sophisticated Mathematica queries.

Now, this should raise the eyebrows of any teacher who finds him/herself wondering if his/her students are “cheating” with computer algebra systems. And, what will raise their eyebrows even further is Wolfram’s latest post entitled, “College is Hard. Wolfram|Alpha makes it easier.”

I kid you not. Have problems balancing equations in chemistry? Just have Wolfram|Alpha do it:

Need to calculate a Taylor Series? Have Wolfram|Alpha do it:

I find myself asking – why didn’t I have this when I was in college?

(Image credits – Wolfram|Alpha blog)

When I found out that he wrote a piece for the New York Time’s Economix blog on how to stir in economics lessons to childhood fairy tales, I was intrigued:

“If you are an economics-minded parent of young children, like me, then you may also have spent long hours wondering how to teach economics to your toddlers. Luckily, much-loved children stories can be made far more delightful with a healthy dose of supply-and-demand charts. Many such tales already include their own hidden economic messages that only need to be exposed to bring edification and enjoyment to the under-5 set.”

Really?

“The Three Little Pigs,” for example, is more than just a story about the value of better building materials. Like a whole host of fairy tales (“The Ant and the Grasshopper,” or “The Goose with the Golden Egg”), it teaches that sensible investment can yield high returns.”

He gives  few other examples which led me to wonder, why is Glaeser so interested in fairy tales? Apparently, its because his first paper was on Cinderella:

“The first thing I ever published in an academic journal was “The Cinderella Paradox Resolved,” which purported to make sense of the odd fact that Cinderella’s parents invested in only two of their three siblings, despite the fact that standard economics pushes toward more equitable arrangements.

The story itself explains this fact with “The Wicked Stepmother Hypothesis,” a reasonable but excessively straightforward explanation of the decision to ignore Cinderella. I offered a distinctly less plausible explanation. The marriage market in Cinderella’s country was a tournament, where marrying the prince carried high rewards and everyone else was a mouse, pumpkin, etc.

In a first-past-the-post race, it often makes sense to lavish investment on only one or two competitors, which makes the stepmother’s behavior entirely rational. Of course, the stepmother did choose to back the wrong horse, but that just makes her unwise, not wicked.

As I explain this logic to my children, they respond with the glazed and distinctly annoyed looks that conveys to me their inner joy. I am sure that you will get the same reaction.”

So, do I take advice from Glaeser on how to raise my kids? On the one hand, he is an intelligent, wealthy, well-dressed man (always wore 3-piece suits if my memory serves me), who smokes a cigar. On the other hand, he was giving our class a lecture on the Slutsky Equation while his wife was in labor (probably with one of the kids who had to listen to this “re-telling” of Cinderella)…

Thankfully, the brilliant thinkers over at Google have created a new option to help those who are nervous about Big Brother Google:

(Yes, it’s from the Onion, so it is a parody)

The Essays of Warren Buffett: Lessons for Corporate America

The book is organized into 8 “chapters”, with each chapter containing a series of excerpts from Warren Buffett’s writings, which as far as I can tell are mostly from the annual reports that Warren Buffett prepares for his company Berkshire Hathaway (I wonder if he writes personal financial reports…). The chapters discuss Buffett’s views on a number of topics, ranging from corporate governance to mergers and acquisitions to accounting to discussions of how investing should work.

Reading the book will give you an interesting look at the mind of one of the most successful investors of all time, but while I valued that insight, I think I was most impressed by three things:

1. I was amazed at how approachable and “folksy” Buffett’s writings are. Instead of relying on complex jargon and consultant-speak, he speaks in plain English, oftentimes using funny analogies or stories (and sometimes even Biblical/literary parables) or extremely nerdy puns to make very simple points. Case in point, to explain the irrationality of some companies who seem to always pursue that “one magical acquisition” which will take them to success, Buffet writes:
   

   “In the past, I’ve observed that many acquisition-hungry managers were apparently mesmerized by their childhood reading of the story about the frog-kissing princess. Remembering her success, they pay dearly for the right to kiss corporate toads, expecting wondrous transfigurations. Initially, disappointing results only deepen their desire to round up new toads. Ultimately, even the most optimistic manager must face reality. Standing knee-deep in unresponsive toads, he then announces an enormous ‘restructuring charge’. In this corporate equivalent of a Head Start program, the CEO receives the education, but the stockholders pay the tuition.”

2. I was impressed at how consistent Buffett has been. It’s rare to find a politician, let alone a businessman, who has had the consistency of values and strategy that Buffett has had. You can take any essay from any chapter of this book, regardless of when it’s from, and, other than mentions of specific years or specific political/cultural references, you would not be able to tell what year that essay had been written. His core message and beliefs on corporate governance, mergers & acquisitions, and especially his investment philosophy have not changed.
3. I was especially impressed at Buffett’s humility. Most executives seem to always desperately crave the spotlight and credit for positive things which have little to do with them and to deflect blame for things which are. I can’t fault them for that, as their salaries and jobs are highly dependent on the perception that they are capable stewards who do not make mistakes. But, Buffett takes a different approach. In many an essay about Berkshire Hathaway’s success, Buffett attributes the credit to the managers of the businesses Berkshire owns, oftentimes noting that his job is only to pick good businesses to own and that it is the managers and the businesses themselves that drive success. In essays about Buffett’s missteps, he freely owns up to them. In multiple essays, he has owned up to holding on to his textile business for too long or not exiting General Re’s derivatives business fast enough. Buffett even goes so far as to explain mistakes that he had made which nobody outside of Berkshire’s leadership team would know about (i.e. investment opportunities he could have made but passed on).

While I definitely learned a great deal about business and how Buffett thinks of the market, I think the most important learning that I took away from the book is what Buffett calls the “Noah principle”, and it is something I will aim to try to adhere to for the rest of my life:

“Predicting rain doesn’t count, building arks does.”

(Image credit – Book cover from Amazon)

Courtesy of JXZ (Image Credit)

I wouldn’t call it a hobby, though. More like a day job that involves doing what is effectively described above, but making slightly more reasonable assumptions .

In a vote of 136 to 70, voters passed a new time limit on how quickly a cottage colony, cabin colony, motel or hotel can be converted to condominiums. The new limit requires that those properties be in operation for three years before being converted to condominiums.

The exact count of the vote — 136 to 70 —had town officials hitting their calculators yesterday. The zoning measure needed a two-thirds vote to pass. A calculation by town accountant Trudy Brazil indicated that 136 votes are two-thirds of 206 total votes, said Town Clerk Cynthia Slade.

Brazil said she used the calculation of .66 multiplied by 206 to obtain the number.

But using .6666 — a more accurate version of two-thirds — the affirmative vote needed to be 137 instead of 136, according to an anonymous caller to town hall and to the Times.

Slade said that she called several of her colleagues to see how they calculate a two-thirds vote, and the answer varied widely. In Provincetown, Town Clerk Doug Johnstone uses .66. But Johnstone said he’d never had a close vote where it might matter.

One of my favorite aspects of Charles Schulz’s Peanuts are Snoopy’s attempts at novel-writing and his classic opening sentence:

It was a dark and stormy night…

This was, of course, immediately followed by some comically ingenious sentence which made it immediately obvious that Snoopy, although quite creative (and talented! how many dogs do you know who can use a typewriter?) would probably never realize his dream of being a published beagle.

Well, Snoopy, you shouldn’t give up, because bizarre story settings actually do get published! Popular mystery author Michael Connelly not only convinced a publisher that he could write a mystery novel set in a data center (about a killer who actually works in a data center), but convinced enough people to read it that it’s now ranked #3 on the New York Times’ Best Seller list (at least as of June 18th, 2009).

Cloud Computing/Data Center blog Data Center Knowledge has an interesting interview with Connelly on his use of some of the most mysterious and unusual settings to ever grace a novel:

Data Center Knowedge: What led you to choose a colocation center as the workplace for Wesley Carver?

Michael Connelly: [My researcher] sent me a link to a video tour of a colocation center. I was impressed by all the security and hardware, how the center was located underground and how it was protected from forces of nature as well as electronic intrusion. It was a fortress and these sort of things always interest me because it always comes down to people, who you have inside the fortress is the most important thing.

Interestingly enough (although I haven’t read it yet), the novel relies on a few real-life technical features in many data centers including cutting edge fire suppression systems, VESDA smoke detection systems, and man traps. Very impressive, considering how few people know what goes on in data centers (which is a shame as data centers are a driving force in the web/computing space, and are massive contributors to jobs in under-developed areas and local energy concerns).

Oh, and to the uninitiated who don’t realize how bizarre and amazing data centers can be, check out this video of a data center in Stockholm built in what looks like a supervillain’s fortified hideout. As it was built in the Cold War, it is even said to be able to withstand a direct nuclear assault!

Now, can we make the next James Bond movie in a Google data center?

(Image credit)

Every investor dreams to find something that nobody wants (and hence are willing to part with cheaply) and be able to turn it into something that everyone wants (and hence something you can sell for a lot). Well, a prefecture in Japan stumbled on just that. From the always amusing Reuter’s Oddly Enough:

A sewage treatment facility in central Japan has recorded a higher gold yield from sludge than can be found at some of the world’s best mines. An official in Nagano prefecture, northwest of Tokyo, said the high percentage of gold found at the Suwa facility was probably due to the large number of precision equipment manufacturers in the vicinity that use the yellow metal. The facility recently recorded finding 1,890 grammes of gold per tonne of ash from incinerated sludge.

That is a far higher gold content than Japan’s Hishikari Mine, one of the world’s top gold mines, owned by Sumitomo Metal Mining Co Ltd, which contains 20-40 grammes of the precious metal per tonne of ore.

(Image credit – gold) (Image credit – sewage)

I am a gold medalist in the macho Sleepless Working Olympics.  I once worked a 60-hour shift without sleep.  (Yes, that’s 2.5 days without any shuteye.)  One stormy February, I put in 468 hours, almost 120 hours a week for four weeks straight, sleeping an average of less than 4 hours a night.  I have enjoyed all the exciting side effects of prolonged sleep deprivation, like uncontrollable “microsleep” which once almost caused me to walk into the path of a cab, or the hallucinations that set in after 48 hours or so–not fun hallucinations, either, just long conversations with co-workers who turned out to have left the building hours or even days before.  I was essentially dreaming with my eyes open.  

So I know whereof I speak when I think about interns training on gruelling regimens.  And you know what I learned on all those sleepless nights?

Well, actually, not much.  It turns out that adequate sleep is crucial to memory formation.  But I did manage to process and retain one fact:  when you have not had enough sleep, you. are. stupid. 

Your attention span shortens.  Your decision making process slows down to a crawl.  Your emotions fray–towards the end of that fateful February, I burst out crying when I learned that the delivery of a hot-swappable backup drive had been delayed.

And, what I think is the most telling argument:

I understand that against this, you have to set the benefits of continuity of care.  But there’s a funny thing:  if continuity of care were really that great, attendings would only have four days off a month, instead of the sybaritic five or more that McNamee is deploring.  Most doctors I know work really hard.  But they don’t work a lot of 36 hour shifts, and they don’t think that two weekends a month off is the height of decadence. 

Let me propose something a little different for all those attending physicians who think that residents should be hazed work in 36 hour shifts. Why don’t you work 36 hour shifts with only 4 days off per month? I mean, don’t you care about your patients and their continuity of care?