http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/crash-1993_573252.html

But the principal cause of the bubble was the industry’s distribution system. Comic books are created and released by publishing houses. There are two giants (Marvel and DC) and then a raft of much smaller independents, which come and go with great frequency. All of the publishing houses left the task of physically getting comics from the printing presses to the retailers to a group of middlemen—the distribution companies.

Very interesting read and although the author draws the connection between the distribution companies and the credit agencies in the housing collapse I believe there is a closer metaphor between the distribution companies and Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.

The comic-book market resembles today’s housing market in unsettling ways. The substantive differences between houses and comic books are as obvious as they are enormous. Yet in both cases the speculatory bubble was helped along by irresponsible middlemen—the distribution companies in one case and the credit-ratings agencies and mortgage appraisers in the other.

Interesting read.

This is truly incredible.

A freight train 295 cars long.

Made possible by new technology in modern day locomotives.  Specifically wireless control of “slave” engines placed along the length of the gargantuan train.

Revealed: The ghost fleet of the recession

'A couple of years ago those ships would have been steaming back and forth, going at full speed. But now you've got something like 12 per cent of the world's container ships doing nothing.'

Freaky.  Click on the picture for the full story.

Twelve and a half square miles of solar panels --> Produces 1/3 the power of one coal burning power plant.

Two Large Solar Plants Planned in California

That means to get the same output from a solar power facility as you would from a coal plant, that inhabits a few acres, you would need a facility in the neighborhood of 35 square miles.  That's a lot of space to have set aside for generating power.

What is the environmental impact comparison between the two?

The quote at the very end of the article is telling:

Neither approaches the economy of fossil-fuel burning plants, said Ms. Zerwer, the spokeswoman for Pacific Gas & Electric. But they will be competitive with wind power and with power from solar thermal plants, which are equipped with mirrors that use the sun’s heat to boil water into steam. And prices will fall, she predicted.

Then why build them?

Go check it out.

http://standby.lbl.gov/Data/SummaryChart.html

It may not make all that much difference to you or your energy bill, but just multiply this by millions of appliances in the US and you can get a sense of the energy savings impact we could have if we fully turned off all the appliances that we could.

The FAQ explains it fairly clearly.

Anything with an external power supply (wallpack), remote control, or clock display require standby electricity.
    
Some of the most common products are TVs, VCRs, cable boxes, stereo systems, and telephone answering machines. Our Data page presents measured standby power use of these and other domestic appliances.

The message is, not everything needs stand by power, turn off what you can.

This might be off-topic but the title of the article keeps it in. [and it also let's put a 7-of-9 picture on the site]

The premise of the article is that we, the capitalist/democratic/free-market west are the Borg.  But we don't compel assimilation.  We merely make all the alternatives less attractive than our way.

You can join and better the lives of you, your kids, your grandkids etc. or not join and basically get left in the dirt.  Your choice, we aren't forcing you.

But the decision becomes obvious.

Go read the whole thing.

What is our challenge as leaders in a Borg world? We should stop denying the obvious. We are taking over the world -- not because we want to -- we just can't help it. Our Borg stuff is just too good. Given the choice, most people will eventually vote Borg. We give them what they love. They will become part of us. We will all become more alike.

Resistance, while not futile, may be inevitably the wrong decision.

Back in the day famous people were quoted as saying the wildest things such as:

There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in their home.
- Ken Olson (President of Digital Equipment Corporation) at the Convention of the World Future Society in Boston in 1977

And then came the pc revolution.

Others have said likewise wildly innacurate prophesies:

Computers in the future may have only 1,000 vacuum tubes and perhaps only weigh 1 1/2 tons.
- Popular Mechanics, 1949

And then came the fab/lab revolution.

Are we now on the cusp of a new generation of technology, one that may have as significant an impact on society as the computer has had? Will it result in what we expect?

There is now a hobbyist priced fab lab that you can build in your own home. Check it out. [Fab@Home].

The estimated cost of making one of your own fab labs at home is $2,300. No precisely-machined-micrometer-lathe-turned parts required, this is apparently all possible with off-the-shelf parts.

The FabLab@Home project has been compared to the Altair 8800 which was the first computer you could build at home from a kit. [linky]

Economies of Abundance

This has many repurcussions. If you can make what you want when you want then the product of value becomes the plans on how to make it. The information. The transition from an industrial economy to an information economy shifts even further into the realm of data supremecy.

The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Journey, Guns 'n Roses, Metallica, U2...never again. Stadium shows? They won't be the same. Who will be able to fill a whole stadium tour once U2 hangs up its spurs?

Why?

Fragmentation.

• Myspace music: [linky]
• Bebo bands: [linky]
• Itumes: [linky]
• Napster: [linky]
• Real Rhapsody: [linky]
• Insound: [linky]
• Winamp: [linky]
• Zune: [linky]

Say no more!

Nobody has control of the means of distribution like they did in the past. I can find any amount of the songs I want in the genre I want. I don't need to be held to the short list that can be fit into a brick and mortar store (hello!...tower records is out of busniess).

To paraphrase Chris Anderson: [linky]

The Faberge egg of controlled distribution and economies of scarcity is shattered into scrambled eggs of no control of distribution and economies of abundance.

A band for all seasons and all reasons and all tastes and all flavors.

Chris Anderson from Wired talks about the economies of abundance and how it is driving the most successful businesses in the new century.

Money quote:

My new policy is that I will do anything the interns think I should do.  The interns told me I should do a press conference in Second Life.  So I did. 

Related links within techRivet.com

• Digg is Broken - Virtual Shrodingers Law
• Viral Advertising as Content

So by now I assume you've read the story about how big Everquest's economy was (is? eh...I don't know).  Well here is the story of the economist who first discovered the financial size of the Everquest as compared to the real world.

[linky]

Castronova sat back in his chair in his cramped home office, and the weird enormity of his findings dawned on him. Many economists define their careers by studying a country. He had discovered one.

Brilliance sometimes comes in the ability to connect the banal with the ordinary and create epiphany.

Update: here's the research paper [linky].