Go Astros!

The 'stros now lead the NL wild card race. They've won 6 games in a row and 17 games in a row at home.

Since the Astros lead, if they lose tomorrow to close the regular season and the Giants win, then they will play a one game playoff in San Fran.

Roger Clemens pitches tomorrow for the Astros on only 3 days rest. Manager Phil Garner decided he wanted to give it his best shot, so he's putting Clemens on the mound.

Personally I'd rather give Clemens the day off and save him for a possible onegame playoff.

Merck

Is Merck a buy right now?

I almost bought Martha Stewart's corporation's stock when it was at its nadir. I was convinced it was a good deal, I just didn't get around to it. After all, the fundamentals of the business were still sound. Her supporters seemed to be rallying around her, unconcerned by the jail sentence. And the jail sentence was only going to be a short time anyway.

Apparently the stock price has since doubled.

I haven't researched Merck's situation yet and I haven't been paying attention to the story. But my initial guess is that the market has probably overreacted, and Merck is at a level worth buying.

Oil makes me nervous

I'm a strong believer that energy prices are a significant influence in economic growth. It makes me nervous to have oil over $50 a barrel. I think low energy prices was one of the most overlooked reasons the economy was so strong in the 90s.

I remember getting gas at 86 cents a gallon, and it's now about $1.90 nationally. That's a huge difference on a micro level, and given the multiplier effect it is no surprise that the economy has not been chugging along as swiftly as it might otherwise, particularly when taxes are cut.

ESPN is pulling an MTV

ESPN appears to be taking a page out of MTV's playbook.

MTV built a brand as an edgy, hip music video brand aimed at the 13-35 demographic. Then they dropped the music video, and just became an edgy, hip brand aimed at 13-35. MTV realized that they had built a brand using the music videos, but they could then leverage the brand into entertainment. Now MTV is almost entirely entertainment, with only lip service to music.

ESPN appears to be going in the same direction. They've ridden the poker wave with their World Series of Poker. Their WSOP shows have done extraordinarily well. They have Dream Job, which must've done well in the ratings, because they're starting several other sports-themed reality tv game shows.

No surprise there. More people will tune in to watch a show like Dream Job, with sports info and a plot then will want to watch a mid-July meaningless baseball game between the Expos and the Brewers.

I'm curious though -- no network has really taken over MTV's former niche of music videos. There are a few networks, but none has hit the same prominence. If ESPN continues to move towards entertainment and away from sports, will other networks fill the void? To some degree, there already are competitors (more so than music video networks) such as Comcast Sports or Fox Sports Network.

Cycles

Seems to me that everything in business runs in cycles.

Forbes is running a series on corporate integrity. About Microsoft they say:

One reason Microsoft gets an A for corporate governance is that Chief Executive Steve Ballmer and Chairman Bill Gates, unlike their employees, do not get stock awards.

This amuses me. I wrote previously about not believing the hype around companies, and used Campbells Soup as an example.

Campbells' Board of Directors was given awards for having the best board in America, and one of the reasons -- if I recall correctly -- was that they took the lead in compensating directors in stock options.

Now companies are giving awards for not giving stock options. Figures.

Expos to DC announcement tomorrow?

ESPN.com is reporting that MLB will announce that the Expos are moving to Washington, D.C. tomorrow.

Mayor Anthony Williams said, "I think we'll be in a position where we can have a celebration tomorrow."

The thrill of the chase...

Forbes has an article on a recent study by a U of Minnesota professor that suggests that happiness is largely genetic. No surprise to me, as I generally come down on the nature side in the nature vs. nurture debate.

Another shocker that shouldn't have been: Wealth levels have a limited impact on happiness. Again, this is no surprise to biologists, Ketelaar says, because money is a relatively recent development in the history of human evolution. "Of course individuals aren't built to track wealth," he says. "Prior to agriculture, you couldn't have a society that could amass wealth."

Clues to our behaviors can be found in the brain chemical dopamine, which is the key to the body's reward system. Strangely, in chimpanzees, dopamine levels peak not when they are going to get an award but when they realize the award is coming. That's very similar to our response to money.

For chimpanzees, this kind of brain chemistry can lead to strange behavior. In an essay, Stanford biologist Robert Sapolsky described a chimp that chased a prospective mate far beyond what would be reasonable, because the mate dropped occasional signals that she might be willing--maybe, someday. Sapolsky referred to this as the "pleasure and pain of maybe." The chimp was willing to go to great lengths for a hypothetical reward.

In other words, it's the chase that is thrilling. Getting what we want is often not so thrilling.

There's something about setting goals and pursuing them that makes us happy. Achieving goals isn't so important, it's the struggle to achieve.

Career paths

A snippet from Forbes:

Careful observers gained pleasure in a whole other layer of knowledge--less concrete, but more tantalizing--by watching the interaction of speaker and audience. Consider the feverish note-taking of AOL founder Steve Case--now a major land developer in Hawaii--when social observer Malcolm Gladwell noted how often consumers misdirect because they do not know what they desire.

From AOL to major land developer in Hawaii.

Cool, but

Via Small Business Trends, comes the Swiss Memory from Victorinox. Basically, take a swiss army knife and add a USB memory stick.

This is cool, I like the combination. But I wonder if it will work out. If I want a memory stick, I'm more likely to buy a keychain memory stick (widely available these days for only $30 or so) than I am to buy the Swiss Memory. The two products aren't very complementary. The swiss army knife is an outdoors activity, while a memory stick is a decidedly indoors activity.

So I don't know. It's a neat concept, but one I doubt will be popularly successful.

One of the few things (I think) I know about women...

Gordon Smith writes:

Our 19th anniversary is on Monday, but we will not have much of a chance to do anything, so this is part of our anniversary celebration. My wife is the funnest, most interesting person I know, so today undoubtedly will be memorable.

P.S. I noticed that GM gave away 276 cars to celebrate Oprah's 19th season. I haven't thought much about the appropriate gift for #19. Any suggestions?

Yes, I have one. Never admit that you waited until two days before the anniversary to think about her anniversary present. If I were the professor, I'd delete the post right now.

On a more substantive note, my father taught me a very valuable lesson: never get a woman you love anything practical. I have found that jewelry is wonderfully impractical.

Expos DC bound?

ESPN is reporting that DC is likely to be announced as the Expos new temporary home soon. The temporary is supposed to make it easier to deal with recalcitrant Orioles owner Peter Angelos.

Meanwhile, it looks like MLB is looking to give away the store to Angelos, who still isn't satisfied. Ridiculous.

Baseball had hoped it could satisfy Angelos by giving the Orioles a portion of the purchase price when the Expos are finally sold, and by helping to create a second regional sports network that would allow the Orioles to continue to televise their games in Washington and Virginia.

Sold for $15,000

Jeremy Wright of Ensight.com has sold his blog for $15,000, including an upfront sale fee and monthly compensation for his continued blogging on business and tech.

Fortunately, Jeremy has good uses he can put the money towards:

But it is enough to pay off my student loans and to take my wife on our honeymoon, as we never really got one when we got married 4.5 years ago. So, for our 5th anniversary we're going somewhere nice, thanks to the sale of Ensight. That's it.

Congrats to Jeremy.

As BusinessPundit notes, Jeremy could be considered a blogrepreneur.

Perhaps the big question is how much is Instapundit worth?

Makeup

Will Baude writes:

To be sure, I can hardly complain about the presence of lipstick that I don't notice.

That, of course, is by and large the key to successful makeup: a girl frequently looks best when it appears she isn't wearing any.

Like Will, I'm not a fan of girls who wear too much makeup. All the concealer and foundation isn't going to change your features, but some girls seem to think it will. Unlike Will, I do think there is a place for makeup.

There are some girls who have pretty eyes, but somehow these eyes are lost in their facial features. The right eyeshadow -- properly applied -- can help highlight and complement some pairs of eyes.

Makeup be an effective form of signaling. A girl who is noticably not wearing any makeup is putting out a certain vibe that she isn't interested in her appearance. That can lead potential suitors to assume that she is not interested in their biddings. So, if she's noticably not wearing any makeup, then she's not playing by the rules of society.

And by not playing by the rules, a girl holds herself back from certain opportunities. I certainly can't cite any studies, but I'm willing to wager that the average professional woman who noticably never wears makeup is handicapping her career. Because she's not playing by "the rules," she's probably more likely to be attributed negative characteristics, suchas standoffish and cold.

Browser wars: Google's army mustering for battle?

According to the New York Post, Google has hired a bunch of people from Microsoft and other tech companies who have worked on programs like Internet Explorer, Java, etc. It also includes this nugget:

Last month, Google hosted Mozilla Developer Day on its campus, a gathering of programmers that work together to build sequels to the re-named Netscape browser. Mozilla, which is "open source" and available to anyone, could be shaped to Google's specifications and be embedded with Google search, Gmail free e-mail and other Google applications.

And in fact, on April 26, 2004, Google registered gbrowser.com.

It makes sense, too. Microsoft is said to be developing their own search engine. If the next version of Windows sets IE7's homepage to be the new Microsoft search, then Google could be in trouble. So, from Google's standpoint, why not take the battle to Microsoft's home turf? Or at least Google can posture like they're going to compete, in an attempt to scare Microsoft away. (This seems unlikely to work. Microsoft doesn't scare easily.)

And of course, I've used Google for awhile, but I'm beginning to ponder a switch to Yahoo or MSN. They're both returning better results than Google lately.

One fly in the ointment: there's apparently already a gbrowser, who might have claim to the trademark.

The story that never ends

Where will Major League Baseball move the Montreal Expos? Apparently the new frontrunner is a DC site on the SE part of town.

Lots of politicians have been pushing very hard for a Capital metro area team, and they don't seem to care about where. There's also other locations under consideration by MLB (Las Vegas, Norfolk, Portland, Ore., and Monterrey, Mexico), but they seem to like the DC area as a first choice, even though Baltimore Orioles owner Peter Angelos is deadset against a DC team.

Initially DC looked like the frontrunner, then that fell through. DC City Council doesn't seem to support the project strongly. According the article, 4 are for, 3 against, and 4 undecided. That's better than previous numbers I've seen.

Arlington and Alexandria were frontrunners at one time, but no longer. Residents didn't want the traffic hassle.

Until very recently, a site over by the Dulles Airport in Loudon County (a bit further out, and not as much of a competition for Angelos' Orioles)

Professional protesters?

Right now, there's only a headline to this article (no story): SOS hires people to protest Lowe's.

You can now hire protesters? I wonder what the market is like for that.

Austin based Schlotsky's to try and come back

Schlotzsky's was once an Austin institution, but now is looking to sell or get an investor to get out of bankruptcy.

Microsoft sharing code?

Rather unusual for Microsoft to share its source code, I think:

Microsoft Corp. announced this week it is making the programming code for its Office 2003 software suite available to government agencies around the globe, a move partly aimed at allowing them to inspect the product for flaws and security problems.

Though Microsoft usually guards such software coding tightly, the step is an extension of an initiative the company began in January 2003 giving about 60 governments access to the inner workings of the Windows operating system. This is the first time the software giant has shared the source code for Office, which includes the Word text processing, Excel spreadsheet, and PowerPoint presentation programs.

Apparently Microsoft has shared some source code before. I'm surprised that this source code hasn't found its way onto the Internet. Or maybe it has, I suppose I don't follow this stuff that closely.

Uhoh and thanks

Thanks to Jeremy for the link, although I didn't know I sound jaded.

Maybe I need to work on my tone...I'm too young to be jaded.

Social security change is needed

Reuters:

Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan last month issued one of his sharpest warnings yet that [Social Security and Medicare] face a severe long-term financial crunch and need reform.

Yes. Would the government please stop giving away so much of my money to my grandparents?

The World War II generation rocked. They fought fascism and communism, and ultimately beat both. But now these programs are now 40% of the federal budget, and still rising.

My generation will have a hard time being prosperous if we keep voting away our money to senior citizens.