Author: Mike P. Lewis

The Isolation of Marriage?

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I read a good article in the NY Time this week called Too Close for Comfort, and got to thinking more about how society treats marriage these days.

The article begins with stats from latest census bureau surveys which show that married-couple households are now a minority. The typical reaction to this was: What is happening to our relationships? This is a bad thing! But the article goes in the other direction, asking instead “is this really such a bad trend?” ….

It has only been in the last century that Americans have put all their emotional eggs in the basket of coupled love. Because of this change, many of us have found joys in marriage our great-great-grandparents never did. But we have also neglected our other relationships, placing too many burdens on a fragile institution and making social life poorer in the process.

There are some interesting facts pulled out of the study:

  • From 1985 to 2004 Americans reported a marked decline in the number of people with whom they discussed meaningful matters
  • People reported fewer close relationships with co-workers, extended family members, neighbors and friends (only close relationship where more people said they discussed important matters in 2004 than in 1985 was marriage)
  • The number of people who depended totally on a spouse for important conversations almost doubled, to 9.4 percent from 5 percent. Not surprisingly, the number of people saying they didn’t have anyone in whom they confided nearly tripled.

What is going on with the world? Apparently marriage is the only place where people can have close relationships. What a screw for the rest of us non-married folks. When discussing this with Toby, he raised a good point in that this is due to the lack of community. We no longer are in constant contact with others so it’s no wonder we don’t have strong connections with them. Without building these connections between brothers, sisters, parents and friends people are lost without good friends and confidants.

There’s one good place where we have strong community, where we are constantly surrounded by friends and live with them day to day. It’s called College and it’s no wonder that people look back on it as the best times of their lives.

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Top 20 Albums of All Time

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No, i’m not expressing my opinion but rather i want to post a clever algorithm done by Robert The Radish on Y! blog. Robert comes up with a mathematical way to determine the top albums of all time. The list is based on the American market and “Greatest Hits” albums and live albums were not eligible. Here’s how he did it:

“Album Staying Power Value + Sales Value + Critical Rating Value + Grammy Award Value”

  • Sales Value = Sales Multiplier * Staying Power Value
  • Staying Power Value (SPV) is: used CD sales data: In the secondary market you can expect to pay around $9.50 for a copy of Rumours (19 mm sold) by Fleetwood Mac, but you would only pay $1.38 for a copy of Cracked Rear View by Hootie (16 mm sold)
  • Critical acclaim: multiple reviews for each album from a diverse cross section of music magazines, newspapers and music review websites to come up with the average review number. Ratings Value = Sales Value * Rating Multiplier
  • Grammy Award Value and it simply looks at how many Grammy Awards each album has won. This is the least important of the components in our formula

So here’s the list of top 20 albums:

#20. Faith – George Michael
Year: 1987 Units Sold: 10 Million
SPV: $9.19 Rating (Stars): 4 Grammys Won: 1
Calculated value per unit based on the formula: $9.79

#19. Appetite For Destruction – Guns N’ Roses
Year: 1987 Units Sold: 15 Million
SPV: $8.81 Rating (Stars): 4 Grammys Won: 0
Calculated value per unit based on the formula: $9.81
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Men's Relay – Watch It

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The best Olympic event i’ve ever seen. If you haven’t seen it, click here or below to check it out

Some Quotes

From Lezac:

“I don’t know how I was able to take it back that fast because I’ve never been able to come anywhere near that for the last 50,” he said. “I can’t even explain it. It was unreal.

From German Coach:

“The whole thing was remarkable,” said Orjan Madsen, the German head coach. “It was one of those moments where you just sit back and say, ‘Jesus Christ.’ If I wouldn’t have seen [Lezak overtaking Bernard] with my own eyes, I wouldn’t have believed it.”

American Coach:

“There’s never been [an anchor swim like that] in my memory,” American head coach Eddie Reese said. “Not running down somebody who holds the world record, who’s on their game. That was incredible. … It has to be in the unbelievable category. That’s the biggest word I know.”

From Lezac:

“It’s happened to me all my career that people would get on my lane line and suck off me,” Lezak said, “so I figured this was one opportunity in all my career to do that. … I’m not going to lie. When I flipped at the 50, it really crossed my mind for a split second that there was no way. Then I changed. And I said, ‘You know what, that’s ridiculous at the Olympics. I’m here for the United States of America. I don’t care how bad it hurts or whatever.’ … Honestly in five seconds I was thinking all these things. I got like a supercharge and took it from there.”

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VC Economics

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This is an article/blog post by Fred Wilson who, in my mind, is one of the best VC’s out there. He’s invested in Feedburner, Tacoda, Twitter and others and i’ve found that his opinions are usually on the money.

He wrote a good post today about how his firm manages their funds and in that he shows the assumptions they have for size of investments, length, carry, etc.. During my pitching process, I found that almost all VC’s operate somewhat like this – with bigger funds having bigger investment sizes. This is great information and would have been helpful a few years ago as knowing how you fit into a VC firm’s plans helps you figure out on how best to pitch to them.

Anyway, i was amazed he’d share this info on a blog and thought it was interesting. Post is here: http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2008/08/venture-fund–1.html

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Tropic Thunder is a Three Amigos Remake?

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The first time i heard about the upcoming movie Tropic Thunder i immediately thought it was a Three Amigos’s remake.  I mean, a group of actors going on what they believe is a shoot only it isn’t a shoot, it’s actually real.  It’s the exact same.  Anyone else with me?

Iron Man's Not So Happy Ending

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(if you haven’t seen the film, this could ruin it for you)

I saw Iron Man again last night and came away with some new thoughts:

The ending SUCKS. Ok, maybe “sucks” is a bit strong, but it is not up to the standard of the rest of the movie. Let’s look at it: Here’s a movie where the main character is one of the smartest people on the planet (or ever) and is so smart that he’s been able to develop a suit based on an energy source that nobody else can get working – not even the best scientists. So now there’s another bad-version of Iron Man in a bigger suit who apparently can do all the same things that the good one can. How does this epic battle end up? How does this super-genius who throughout the movie was able to be clever and outsmart the villian? It ends with two Iron Men who can’t get hurt punching each other in the face and slamming each other into walls. Sometimes this apparently hurts. Other times, they get right up. Nobody knows why. Then to kill the bad guy, Iron Man tells Pepper to blow up the building and just hope he survives. Now that’s a good idea.

Some movies are great because of their endings:

  • The Sting
  • The Sixth Sense
  • The Usual Suspects
  • Rocky

Some movies are great through and through and have endings that match their great stories:

  • The Shawshank Redemption
  • Se7en
  • Hoosiers

For a movie that is good throughout, the ending is not up to snuff for the rest of the film.

Also, i have issues with the bad Iron Man. For instance, how does bad Iron Man survive the icing? One minute he’s falling to the earth covered in ice, the next he’s recovered. How can the bad Iron Man move so well? He’s not in a suit like Robert DJ but rather he’s sitting in a seat with levers. I don’t think you could conduct hand to hand combat easily in that. Also, much of the movie showed Robert DJ practicing how to fly and move and tinkering the suit. Jeff Bridges did zero of that. He just plugged the arc reactor in and knew how to do everything immediately.

All in all, the ending let down the rest of the movie for me. It was all so buttoned-up with the exception of that duel. I’ve heard people say that Iron Man is a great movie. Not in my book.

Coase's Law: Cost of Collaboration

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One of the interesting things i read in Wikinomics is Coase’s Law. I had never heard of it. Here’s the deal:

Ronald Coase was a badass and won the Nobel Prize in 1991
Ronald Coase was a badass and won the Nobel Prize in 1991

Many companies today are turning to collaborative b2B models where consumers, employees, partners, and even competitors co-create value for a company. This is all happening due to the declining cost of collaborating.

It began in 1937 when a English socialist, Ronald Coase, published a paper called “The Nature of the Firm.” Coase was both fascinated and bewildered by american industry. He toured Ford and General Motors and wondered aloud why economists could say that Stalin and communism was mistaken to try to run the Soviet Union like one gigantic company when Henry Ford adn Sloan ran their own gigantic companies (Ford & GM) in similar ways. After all, the marketplace is the best mechanism for matching supply and demand, establishing prices, and getting maximum utility from limited resources.

He studies more the cost of information. Producing things (bread, a car, a hospital ER) involves steps where close cooperation and common purpose is essential. You can only break down day-to-day tasks so much before incurring costs that outweigh the savings of doing in under the same roof. These are called transaction costs:

  1. search costs (finding different suppliers and determining if they are good)
  2. contracting costs (negotiating prices and contracts)
  3. coordination costs of meshing products and processes

Most businesses in 1937 determined it was best to do all of these in-house. All of this encompasses “Coase’s Law” which states: A firm will tend to expand until the costs of organizing an extra transaction within the firm become equal to the costs of carrying out the same transaction on the open market. Basically, as long as it’s cheaper to perform a transaction inside your firm, keep it there.

The internet makes a difference because basically now transaction costs as so low that it has become much more useful to read Coase’s Law backwards: You should shrink a company until it’s harder to do things externally than internally, then bring it in-house.

It’s interesting because Coase’s Law does both a great job of explaining why old-school corporations were so big and powerful and does an equally good job of explaining why traditional companies are on the way out and why new businesses are smaller and more nimble.

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Heavy Rotation

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I got a new plugin that feeds me an RSS feed of my top plays of the past week into my RSS feeder.  It’s interesting to see what my top artists are each week.  This week i’ve got:

  1. Whitest Boy Alive
  2. Born Ruffians
  3. Guns N’ Roses

The Whitest Boy Alive and Born Ruffians are two of my favorite new artists. WBA are really chill and easy to listen to while Born Ruffians are a better version of Clap Your Hands Say Yeah.  I recommend you check both out.

Why I like to blog

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While reading Fred Wilson’s blog today about Live Blogging, he ended his post with this comment:

Blogging has a reputation as an ego centric activity for people who want to be heard. And that is certainly true and a big motivation for many people who do it. But blogging can be valuable in many other ways.

I often get in conversations with people as to why i blog.  To many it’s viewed as pure a vanity project.  I’ve found that putting my ideas and thoughts down for others to read is a great way to stimulate conversation and “talk” with friends but to do so by;

  1. allowing them to jump in at their leisure.  After they see the movie or read the book that i’ve written about or if they finally get a moment when they’re bored at work.
  2. not requiring them to participate.  They can read and process but unlike email they don’t have to respond unless they want to.  I’ve noticed that many of my friends will read my blog, never comment but will bring it up with me weeks or months later.  I love this.  We’re talking but in a turn-based way.  I’m just always making the first move
  3. making the conversation to be public – anyone can join.

I love it for these reasons. I don’t really care how many people read it or if anyone at all reads.  Sometimes i like to just get my thoughts down on paper so they’re organized and stated and i can forget them.

Why do you blog?  What do you like about it?

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You know you're a Minnesotan if…

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My sister sent me this and i found myself chuckling.  Instead of forwarding, i’m just putting it up…

You know you’re a Minnesotan if..

  • 75% of your graduating high school class went to the Univ. of Minnesota. (maybe another 10% to Madison)
  • You know more than 1 person who has hit a deer.
  • People from other states love to hear you say words with “o”s in them.
  • You know what and where “Dinkytown” is.
  • “Perkins” was a popular hangout option in high school.
  • You have no problem saying or spelling “Minneapolis.”
  • You get mad at people who think Fargo is in Minnesota
  • Your school classes have been canceled because of snow or cold.
  • You know what Mille Lacs is and how to spell it.
  • You assume when you say “The Cities” people know where you are referring to.
  • You know the 2 sports-related reasons why we hate Dallas.
  • Continue reading “You know you're a Minnesotan if…” →