In addition to lengthy online surveys, bayesian algorithms, mutual compatibility profiles, there is now genetic matching to help boy meet girl. Gene Partner claims that true love (or at least a piece of the online dating market) can be found in DNA sequences.

I’m planning a trip to Cambodia and India next month, and I expected that being able to use the internet to, for example, choose a hotel in Delhi would be simpler that the old way in which you either booked a famous high-end place or just showed up and took your chances.

It’s not.

I don’t really need or want to look at the 200 hotels that are available and read dozens of reviews (many of them obviously planted) for each place.

In his recent book, Jason Zweig explained that after a certain point investors with access to more information tend to underperform investors with less info to work with. I am beginning to understand why.

The Japanese have the right idea about Valentines day. Much better to have the girls buy chocolates for the guys.

It’s wonderful to watch a nation try to create an ideal government. Bhutan is in the process of creating one in which the government is held accountable based on the happiness of its people.

To make this work the Bhutanese came up with a way to mathematically quantify happiness both on the individual and national level, and to have an objective measure of to what degree specific government policies increase or decrease the happiness of the people.

Part of this involves a 300 question questionnaire, which most people were quite happy to fill out. Questions about the degree to which people feel safe from spirit and ghost attacks struck me as silly at first, but the fact is that people do feel less happy when they are worried about being attacked by a ghost.

Amazing and inspiring stuff.

The following email was sent from one of our financial clients. They truly know how to get in the holiday spirit. I’m sure the sender meant well and never got to see the irony.

Subject: Season’s Greeting

May the miracle of Christmas fills your heart with warmth and love.
Merry Christmas!

Sincerely,
xxx

–
This message may contain confidential, proprietary, or legally privileged information. No confidentiality or privilege is waived by any transmission to an unintended recipient. If you are not an intended recipient, please notify the sender and delete this message immediately. Any views expressed in this message are those of the sender, not those of xxxx.

This message does not create any obligation, contractual or otherwise, on the part of xxxx. It is not an offer (or solicitation of an offer) of, or a recommendation to buy or sell, any financial product. Any prices or other values included in this message are indicative only, and do not necessarily represent current market prices, prices at which xxxx would enter into a transaction, or prices at which similar transactions may be carried on xxxx own books. The information contained in this message is provided “as is”, without representations or warranties, express or implied, of any kind. Past performance is not indicative of future returns.

CyberMarriage!

Last week a Japanese man married a Nintendo DS video game character from a game called Love Plus. The ceremony was well attended, officiated by a priest and the couple spent their honeymoon in Guam.

Hummm. I’m pretty sure that she was under the age of consent.

Our minds as well as our bodies have an immune system.

Our mental immune system is activated any time an alien and potentially harmful concept is introduced. In the same way white blood cells surround and isolate a virus, our minds quickly surround the new concept with excuses and semi-logical reasons why the new concept cannot be valid until the concept is comply isolated and cannot connect to any of our healthy, strong beliefs. It ensures that no thoughts can pass though this barrier an interact with the new concept. In this way the new concept is rendered inert and harmless and eventually passes out of our minds as waste.

One of the things I find most amusing about hippies is that they tend to be hopelessly unaware of the degree to which their anti-establishment views are instilled and fostered by corporate America, and how much these companies profit from them.

However, the tea-baggers have taken this delusion to a whole new level. It seems that Glenn Beck has A Plan which he will be explaining in a new book which will go on sale next year. In order to publicize the book, he will be staging a march on Washington, and I’m sure a lot of his fans will “do their civic duty” by showing up.

Putting Red/Blue politics aside for a moment, this is an astounding example of the near perfect annexation of political dissent. It almost seems like satire. Going to a protest has become no more significant than going to a Miley Cyrus concert.

When you look back in history at the various causes that have resulted in large protests, you can’t help but be struck by the sacrifices, the sufferings and the vision of the people behind them. I think this has been true whether the issue found its support on the right or the left.

So it seems that political dissent has been reduced to a PR event. It’s like equating Miley and Mozart because we call them both “musicians”.

Oh yes, and if this little stunt was not offensive enough in the abstract, Beck has scheduled his book release march for August 28, 2010 at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial — the 47th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech.

I was cruelly denied my lunchtime workout today. Gold’s Gym closed for the day because the elevator was out of order. The fact that it was closed did not piss me off half as much as the fact that none of the dejected looking gym members milling about saw the utter stupidity in this.

It’s a gym for christsake! The customers are (or at least should be) perfectly willing to walk up a few flights of stairs. If that’s too much for you, fine! Walk up as far as you can and then go back down. Congratulations, you just finished your workout.

When I go back tomorrow, I’m sure they will be apologizing and handing out little sugary snacks for every one to chew on as they wait in line to use one of the StairMasters.

My friend Jim sent me an interesting article on “What Startups are Really Like”

It’s a worthwhile read, but I had to chuckle at the author commiserates with one of the entrepreneurs he was interviewing about how hard it is to get a date.

Unfortunately this extends even to dating:
It surprised me that being a startup founder does not get you more admiration from women.

I did know about that, but I’d forgotten.

Rubbish! The whole “I quit my job because that’s no way to spend a life, and now my friends and I are going to change the world.” thing goes over phenomenally well with women.

Ebisu Baccarat Chandelier

Last week Ebisu Garden Place (our local shopping mall) put up their version of the Christmas tree; the “Baccarat 250 Chandelier” which is made from 250 different crystal lights. It’s impressive, I suppose, but it never struck me as very “Christmasy”. It seems kind of sterile behind all that plate glass.

The Japanese, however, adore the thing and come out in droves each year to ohh, ahh and take photographs. This year Ebisu was plastered with big red signs imploring passers by to “Feel the Experience” or the “Eternal Lights” visible only until January 11th.

If you can’t make it out, here’s an awesome interactive view, check out this site. You might even see me on my way home.

Is a lot harder than it seems. Last December I decided to bring my 104 cm waistline down to 90. The first 8 cm came of pretty quick, but the last four a proving to be annoyingly stubborn.

OK. I’m getting up from the computer and going out for a run.

I cook once a year, on Ami’s birthday. Last night was Italian.

Actually, I enjoy cooking. It’s artistic and practical at the same time and has a complexity and variability to it that is very much like music. Everyone has their own unique style and whether the starting point is a recipe or sheet music, no two people will produce exactly the same result.

I barely have time for my music these days. If I started cooking, I would not have time for the rest of my life. Ah, another 364 days and I’ll be in the kitchen again.

Hong Kong is going nuts with this swine flu scare.

I went to dinner last night and the buttons in the elevator were covered with a plastic sheet and a sign saying “Disinfected every two hours”. But if you walked around the corner and took a look down the alley you could see they had raw meat sitting out in the open for hours.

Someone really needs to get their priorities straight.

I tried yoga for the first time the other day. I walked into the studio and saw three guys warming up by doing the splits. My way-too-perky instructor confirmed that this was, in fact, Introduction to Yoga, I grabbed a mat from the pile, stretched what muscles I could, and prepared myself for the inevitable upcoming groin-pull.

Fortunately, the next 45 minutes did not involve any strianed muscles or dislocated joints, but turned out to be physically exhausting. I never imagined that not moving could be so tiring. I’m going back again next week.

I definitely have to invite three or four of these girls over for a game of Twister.

After conclusively proving that water is wet and grass is green, researchers at Oklahoma State University demonstrated that single women are more attracted to married men then to single men. Scientists told 200 students they were participating in a study on online dating, but their “match” was fictitious. He was perfectly crafted to match their interests. All girls were shown the same picture and told the same name, job description, etc. The only difference was that half the group was told their perfect match was single and half were told he was married.

Of the girls who thought Mr. Right was singe, 59% wanted to meet him, but when the girls were told he was married 90% wanted to pursue a relationship.

I grew up Catholic, and today I attended the the Buddhist one-year anniversary funeral rites for my grandfather-in-law. The Catholic and Buddhist approaches to life and death could not be more starkly different.

The Catholics are up front with you. While you are alive, the Catholics endeavor to make you feel as guilty as possible. Not feeling guilty enough is actually considered a sin. They then leverage this guilt to extract the maximum financial return from you in the brief time they have. After you die, however, you are fully amortized, and the Earthly church is done with you. You are considered to be, no matter how long the odds, “with God”.

The Japanese Buddhists play the game in reverse. You can do what you want to in life without guilt. I’ve been out drinking (and more) with a number of priests here in Japan and believe me, they are pros. Aside from the isolated blessing of a building site here and the occasional festival there, the Buddhists don’t demand much in the way of contributions.

After you die, however, the extortion begins. The assumption seems to be that your loved one has screwed up and will be waiting for reincarnation for quite some time. If you want to avoid problems, the priests need to intervene on your behalf. You need to pay up or the dearly beloved will suffer for it.

First, the deceased needs to be given a new name, and “good” names cost millions of yen. The priesthood is not too specific about what happens if they decide to give the soul a “bad” name, but I’m assured it’s something horrible. Not that the priests want to give anyone a bad name, you understand, but a lack of sufficient cash upfront can affect their concentration and, hey, they obviously can’t be held responsible for what happens if the family is preventing them from concentrating.

The shakedown doesn’t stop there, of course. The family needs to come up with additional protection money on the 7, 49 and 100-day anniversaries of the funeral as well as the 1, 3, 5, 7 and 13-year anniversaries to ensure that the now wandering soul does not “have an unfortunate accident” while waiting for their next incarnation.

Back in college I had one an original Mac. You know, the one that looked like a toaster and that Burke Brethard made come to life and torture a penguin. (If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you are too young. Your loss!) The one where you could fit the Mac OS, MS Word, and a few dozen Word documents on a 400k floppy disk.

Seems some enterprising chap pitted an old MacPlus against a dual-core 64-bit AMD machine. It’s a very fair test in that the benchmarks he set up are realistic and meaningful. It’s interesting much much things improved over 20 years.

Mt friend Stuart pointed me towards this article on how the British Government is now recognizing McDonald’s shift manager training as formal educational credits.

The article is full of quotes as to how this will provide greater eductionial oportunitys by allowing more people to get degrees and increase intentional competitiveness and result in a more skilled workforce, presumably because more people earn degrees.

It’s all nonsense, of course, giving more workers progressively more meaningless pieces of paper does not make the workforce more skilled any more than (as the US is finding out) printing more money makes the population any richer.

Last week China’s Administration for Religious Affairs announced that starting next month it will be illegal for Tibetian monks to reincarnate without the government approval.

Of course, once all the amusement wears off, you can see this for what it is. China’s latest attempt to exterminate Tibetan Buddhism once and for all. The whole leadership structure of the religion is based on monks reincarnating. The Chinese government how has the legal pretext to dictate the next generation of leaders and arrest those chosen by traditional means. With the Dali Lama getting on in years, the legislation is rather timely.