No Time For Child's Play
Although I'm a big fan of wiz kids in their 30's with no hair, I'm not altogether sure about Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson's decision to give 35-year-old former investment banker Neel Kashkari the responsibility of spending $700 billion of taxpayer money. Paulson brought Kashkari with him from Goldman Sachs to serve as assistant Treasury Secretary and named him to head up the new Office of Financial Stability created by the Bailout Bill. Kashkari has an engineering degree from University of Illinois and an MBA from Wharton Business School after which he worked for NASA for a spell before becoming an investment banker (pays better). Clearly he's smart and probably a math genius. But this is the problem. If you read Charles R. Moriss' "The Trillion Dollar Meltdown" it is pretty clear that math wizards giddy with the heady formulas of their financial models largely contributed to the outrageous leverage that caused the collapse. And Paulson is already on the hot seat for not moving faster to head off the crisis. So, is a young quant, as intelligent as he may be, the best choice to navigate the troubled waters ahead?
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Laughs Online
Military Attempts at Saving on Fuel Costs
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What's the big idea?
Beam Me Up 
During the final days of the presidential election, CNN proudly debuted its new hologram technology allowing them to project 3-D images of interview subjects into the CNN Situation Room for question and commentary. George Lucas fantasized about similar technology in Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith (or maybe it already existed but only the Lucas and the Gates of the world got to play with it). Trekky fans around the world rejoiced I'm sure at having possibly found a new position for Scotty in the modern era. My reaction was a little mixed. On the one hand, it seems strange to me that I would be watching a video of a video. If we need to videotape someone to create the 3-D image, why wouldn't we just broadcast the original video to the viewer's TV screen as opposed to converting it into another video? Clever, but odd. On the other hand, I can imagine applications where the live hologram might be useful. A bad break up with a high probability of a slap might be one example. A hologram could also be used as a cover back in the office while you slip out for a quick nail appointment. Whatever the ultimate applications turn out to be, one thing seems to be clear-improvements in communications technology always have the paradoxical effect of bringing us closer and pushing us farther apart.
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Sincerely,
Kwame J. Granderson
Equinaire
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