I am, for sure, much more familiar with the ways of startups in the United States, particularly here in the San Francisco/Silicon Valley region, which has been described as the Mecca of startups and innovation (and other glorious attributes).

I have been to Europe several times and attended startup events there to see what they have to offer. There are clear similarities, and there are eye-opening differences. What are they, and why should you want to know about it?

First, the similarities. For starters, Europe offers the same co-working spaces and incubation leadership, although the emphases may be slightly different. Then again, here in the United States, different incubators offer different leadership and focus. But, for the most part, the general structure of creating a space for startups to germinate is the same between the two continents. The funding for European spaces may be partially contributed by the government, which wouldn't seem odd, given that Europe feels they have to play catch-up with the US, and a democratic socialist country would be all in favor for such social investments.

Another odd and unexpected similarity is that English is the de facto language. Now, I haven't been to all co-working spaces in all of Europe or met with all startups. But, the several I have visited, and the events held there were all conducted in English. If not explicitly in English, it's clear that an intimate working knowledge of English is required.

Lastly, both European and American startups have an excessive fascination and hunger for investment funding. I caution all startups to refrain from being overly dependent on investment funding. The key to a successful startup is always the customers. Bring in customers, and funding will follow.

That said, what are the key differences? Let me explain first the mindset of American based startups. The strange thing is that this mindset is true regardless of whether the startup is founded by US born citizens or ex-pats from any other part of the world. I've met native born citizen founders, and founders from other countries with barely passable English, but when they're here in the San Francisco/Silicon Valley region, they follow a particular mindset.

The mindset is as follows: find out a problem that you (the founder) have that really vexes you. Throw everything including the kitchen sink at it to solve that problem. There are ample examples of successful startups that grew out of solving immediate problems. Travis Kalanick's problem with getting a taxi spurred his creation of Uber. Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia created Airbnb because they were short on funds and thought it would be a quick and dirty way to earn some money by renting out an airbed in their living room. This mindset is not new. American inventors and entrepreneurs have utilized this nuclear option to solving problems since the Wright Brothers worked on the first airplane, since Edison sweated 99% to create the light bulb and even before.

In the modern world, however, startup founders from wealthier families don't have real, pressing problems. They live a stress-free life and their problems are rather First World. What are such problems? Living in San Francisco, the primary problem, even for kids of wealthy families, is paying rent. So variations on how to make Airbnb-ish business work abound. There are many startups that work on extending the Airbnb concept to associated businesses. Second problem is finding food when needed. So, here in San Francisco, there are a plethora of startups working on delivering food. And not just any cheapie pizza-quality food, too; it would include locally grown, hand-cultivated arugula and endive salads, dry-air cured salumi and organic honey covered chocolate... You get the idea. They also want to get laid, so that's why there are three bazillion dating apps, each claiming to solve the problem because "it worked for me." Lastly is a relatively new craze, the social validation app. These are apps that allow the user to alert friends of one's whereabouts and goings on. For the alpha among the group, it's a way to validate the alpha-ness of the person, as well as deciding who gets to be in the messaging. For the beta among the group, it's a way to find out where the friends are so they one can go there to meet up. I can see the social need to be included, but I can't fathom how a business model can be created to monetize personal vanity.

European startups – at least the ones I've encountered – approach the problem-solution model in a different way. It appears to me that what these European startups do is take an ordinary technology and ask, "Suppose we take this ordinary technology, and throw in some newer technology to jazz it up. What novel problems could it solve?" It follows two of the three R's of environmental sustainability: repurpose and recycle. Reduce, the third R, comes along for the ride because by recycling existing technology and repurposing it to solve other problems will have the effect of reducing energy, costs, inefficiency, and so on.

What Euro startups do is take an ordinary technology, say the regular radio. Throw in some new technology into it, and voila, use radio to transmit WiFi signals. Or, take an old locomotive diesel engine. Throw some new technology into it, and voila, a new portable motor to lift items to upper floors. (These examples are purely out of my head; they are not actual startup ideas I've encountered.) The key themes are, 1) repurpose old technology or device by adding something new (have the interface be an iPad), 2) solve a problem that most people don't realize is a problem (that is, people are accustomed to a certain level of service, but when the new technology is applied to the service, it becomes so much better for everyone).

In order to make this successful, it requires seeing with a new set of eyes. One has to see the ordinary everyday processes as ripe for transformation. At the same time, one has to look at existing technologies and envision applying a novel twist via technology to vastly improve the process. As one real-life example, several European (specifically, Finnish) startups are working on sleep. What's the current expectation? Sleep is sometimes difficult, but eh, that's what we expect. But no. They take some existing products, radio, thermostat, heaters; add some new technology, haptic feedback systems, devices with accelerometers and gyroscopic orientation (e.g., smartphones), and create a device that will help make sleep so much better.

The difference is particularly of interest to investors. While the US mindset create paradigm shifting disruptors like Uber and Airbnb, finding the winning startup is akin to finding the needle in a haystack. For every problem, there are thousands of startups trying to be the one that makes it happen. As an investor, which startup will you bet on? For every Airbnb, there are thousands of others that never got past Series A. For investors, the US model results in low odds of finding the winner, but the pay-out is a doozy.

The European mindset says to look at unconventional problems; problems that people don't realize are problems. Solve that for them, and make bundles of money. Here, the players are fewer, so the ocean is not bloody red. However, it could be hard to convince customers that here is the product or service that can really help them, because the customers are not aware they are in need of help. Also, the customer base, especially for B2B type startups, is smaller because the solution could be very specific to a few businesses. For investors, the odds of success are high, but the potential level of return may only be a modest amount.

The word on the lips of everyone these days is FinTech, short for financial technology. The question is, what exactly does that mean? Part of the reason for the conundrum is that financial technology encompasses a huge swath of industry sectors. Safe to say, financial technology concerns itself with any aspect of making a financial transaction.

And chief among these aspects are two major categories (with a lot of overlap, to be sure). The first has to do with security and trust. People just want to know that, at the end of the day, if they paid $15.25 for something, they got $15.25 worth of whatever they paid for, and vendor has that $15.25.

The second category concerns the new catchphrase, "reducing friction". Reducing friction is the euphemistically nice way of saying, "removing middlemen". That $15.25 a person paid is received by the vendor, but the vendor has to pay the credit card company for processing: 3% plus a possible fixed fee. Then that money has to be sent to the vendor within 30 days from the processor in a single chunk, combined with many other transactions. If not, the processor loses money due to its own friction of transferring money. Thus, the vendor has added friction of a 30-day A/R. Reducing friction in this scenario would mean the person can pay the vendor money directly and by-pass the credit card processor company.

Many start-ups I've seen are working one or the other, or both, problem categories. Which one will come out on top will depend on a whole host of things not related to the actual solution, probably. Can the start-up scale quickly to capture the market against competing ideas? Is the timing right? Are other technologies there to make it work? Will people accept the concept?

A well-known anecdote about how other regions create their own "financial technology" is the story of how farmers and indigent workers from Pakistan and Bangladesh use mobile phone minutes as currency. So a Bangladeshi worker in Qatar gets paid in Qatari Riyals, but can't easily send that money to folks back home. So he buys mobile phone minutes and transfers those minutes to his family in Bangladesh. They can then use it for actual phone usage, or trade for other goods and services in their home country, or convert it back to the native currency of Taka. What happened here is organically grown financial technology (cell phones repurposed as ATMs) that meets the acceptance of the users (people trust the system) and reduced friction (there's still a lot of friction in order to make the transfer, but much less so that putting money in an envelop and expect that mail to arrive in a few weeks).

The reason I point out this anecdote is to demonstrate that solutions within financial technology can come from anywhere. A major player trying to build the perfect system may not achieve market adoption, or might not be able to earn money because the "friction" it reduced was itself. I know that big banks are really shaking in their boots. They may be too big to fail, but they are never too big to be irrelevant. Somewhere, some time in the future, some entity will create a financial system just slightly more sophisticated than the mobile phone money transfer system, and traditional banks will become irrelevant.

If you're like me, we know what we want from a bank: we want the assurance that if it says, "$12,341.65" is in the account, then that's how much is in the account and we should be able to withdraw exactly that without trouble. Really, that's about it. We've already given up on earning interest on that money. And, we don't even need to know that that amount is always there. (Indeed, in traditional banks, that amount is just a number on a statement. There isn't really $12,341.65 in cash assigned to me. The monies from all account holders are commingled and some of it has been moved to some other financial instruments. If all account holders went to a bank, especially to a smaller branch office, and demanded their money, that bank can most definitely not be able to hand out all that money in cash.) We just want to know, when push comes to shove, that the number stated on our account can be retrieved and isn't lost into the void without someone (the bank!) being responsible to make good on any deficit.

This puts banks and banking right in the middle of the line of fire for disruption. Banks are still beholden to various regulations: very, very strict regulations (and deservedly so). What if some other entity comes in to offer some, but not all, features of a bank. Someone that can ensure that every cent or fraction of a cent can be tracked, so it's impossible for the money to disappear into the void (I can hear people crying out, "BitCoin! Block chain!"). What if some other entity allows us to do the very basic of what we need: a place to hold our virtual funds? That's really what we need.

At one time, PayPal may have been that entity. But they came in too early, and it was difficult for people to adopt to it. Then, its friction was too high when technology made transactions and transferring money much more frictionless. Bitcoin itself is not going to work. I've suggested to others that Bitcoin is to finance as Esperanto is (was) to language. Man-made artifacts to something that is culturally adopted rarely works. It takes generations of people willingly wanting to use a new system before it gets adopted, even though most new technology are adopted quicker than older technology (the original telephone took 50 some years before 50% of households had one; there are now more mobile phones actively operating in the world than there are people living).

Where will adoption occur? Well, online transactions are becoming the norm, so the masses have adopted to online transactions. One sure-fire place to go to see whether a technology is being adopted is in the adult entertainment sector. Indeed, the online payment systems were first set up by all those online adult entertainment sites, and they worked out all the bugs and everyone else followed. But with porn so prevalent and free, the financial solutions in that sector is no longer technologically cutting edge.

The new sector where financial technology will gain adoption will be from the sharing economy sector. Companies like Uber and Airbnb will be the financial titans of the future. They've already have adoption. They handle transactions and people are happy with it. They are mobile. They can absorb the friction because their primary revenue stream doesn't come from charging commissions on transferring money or transactions.

And in the case of Airbnb, where there are many more international transactions, it might be possible for them to provide currency exchange arbitrage. For example, suppose I plan to travel to Europe in December. Suppose the US dollar is dropping versus the Euro for the moment. If that trend continues, My $1,000 I plan to use in December will be worth, say, €800, whereas it's currently worth €900. Perhaps, when I book through Airbnb, I can throw in $1,000 and have them transfer that into euros at €900 now. When I get to Europe in December, I can withdraw from my Airbnb account my €900 instead of what could be only €800 had I made the exchange when I arrived. Of course, if the exchange rate goes the other way, I can decide to just leave the money in my Airbnb account and make currency exchange when I get there. At some future date, I can request Airbnb to return my money.

Now, is Airbnb a bank? Well, it's not clear. It all depends on what it does with the money I sent to them. But you get the picture, any entity that holds your money, even for a moment's time, can be considered, effectively, as a bank. As far as you or I care, however, as long as we can get back our money, and any difference can be accounted for, it's all good. Now that would be disruption.

A lot of discussions that I read on the web devolves into discussions on evolution. All right, that's because most discussions center on education and scientific advances and critiques of the same. Invariably, someone would say, "But the theory of evolution is a just a theory, not fact."

Allow me to use this little blog here as the anchor post for many of you who are scientifically aware to refute such statements, but maybe you don't all have the words all lined up. Feel free to add your comments so that it could be even more complete.

First off, most non-scientists think that the hierarchy of scientific knowledge goes as such, in decreasing scientific: highest is scientific fact, then a scientific law, then a scientific theory and below that, at the lowest level is scientific hypothesis. The reality is almost the opposite. There are some disputes as to where a scientific hypothesis lies, but the hierarchy goes pretty much as such: theory, law, hypothesis, fact. Yes, scientific fact (or fact, in general) has a very low value.

The main reason for the mistaken values to these intellectual concepts is just the difference between colloquial usage of these words and the technical usage of these words.

Let's look at each one at a time.

Just The Facts, Ma'am Facts seem to be of the most value because they appear to be indisputable. In fact, facts are quite disputable. A fact is just an observation. And that observation may be mistaken or have a different view depending on how it's observed. An observable has to be observed by some sensing device. Prior to the invention of many scientific tools, the sensing device humans used were the five senses: sight, hearing, smelling, tasting and touch. The funny thing is that using these senses allows one to only sense part of the "fact". It doesn't give the whole picture. It never does. Thus, facts are of least value because they can be massaged by ignoring measurements using different (read: better) sensory systems or by misusing the wrong sensory system.

For example, suppose an object is emitting a bluish light. But you take a picture of it using black-and-white film (yeah, I know, but go along with me). The fact that the light is blue is removed when the sensor (the camera and film) does not capture that information. As far as the viewer of the photograph is concerned, there is no blue light, just some light. So you see how facts can get distorted. Suppose you took a picture with a color camera. How hot was the object? The color camera captures visible light and does not do a good job of capturing infrared or lower frequency electromagnetic waves, which is what radiant heat would be. If we put our hands near the object, we might feel the warmth of its glow, so we can acknowledge that heat is radiating from it. But a color photo wouldn't capture that fact. Nor would a camera capture any noise (or silence) made by the subject.

I think these examples show that facts are hardly immutable. They change, depending on what sensory device is used to evaluate facts. Indeed, a lot of scientific debate revolves in how to interpret an observed phenomenon. A frequent question asked is, "what are we not seeing, and how could we observe this phenomenon in another way?"

The Law's The Law Scientific laws have a noble place among the non-scientists because of the name, "law" is bestowed on it. Another term for "law" is "principle." In either case, a scientific law is a generalize conclusion based on many, many repeated experiments, as well as applicable of logic to deduce the law. Here is a list of scientific laws from wikipedia.

Here's one example: Newton's Law of Gravitation. Newton determined that gravitational force is proportional to the product of the masses of the two attracting objects divided by the square of the distance of the (center of mass of the) two masses. The proportionality constant is G, the gravitational constant. How was this law derived?  Newton didn't just pull this formula out of his head (whether there was plagiarism and other shenanigans is another question altogether). Note that this law, while useful enough to get men to the moon and back safely, does not explain gravitation. It just tells us how much force is acting on an object based on the masses and distances involved. It also shows that the force is not dependent on other measurable attributes, like color, temperature, shape, or age.

Another interesting ramification of this law is the conclusion that the acceleration due to gravity is independent of the mass of the object falling. Speaking with some non-scientific literate people, I actually found some who are astounded by this "fact".  Some people actually do believe that heavier objects fall faster than lighter objects. Galileo disproved this myth by dropping two differently weighted cannon balls from a tall building (the Tower of Pisa?) and noting that they both landed at the same time. This experiment disproved the claim of Aristotle that heavier objects fall faster than light objects, a claim that lasted 1800 years. Aristotle is a great example of how science works. Aristotle got a lot of things wrong.  He supported the geocentric view of the universe, that heavier objects fall faster than lighter objects, and many other eventually disproved ideas on motion, chemistry and biology. Of course, he got some things right, so he wasn't a complete crank. Part of the reason for his failures is because his views of the facts were inadequate. He couldn't see what an atom was. He couldn't measure how far the moon was from the earth. The concept of measuring, back in Aristotle's time, is completely different than our current understanding of measuring.

In the end, laws just give scientists and engineers a quick-and-dirty method to compute values or to make conclusions. But laws lack any fundamental underpinning. There is no understanding of why the law is true. Newton's law of gravity, for example, doesn't explain why two objects gravitate towards each other. Given two objects, one would initially think they would have no effect on each other, especially if they're non-sentient objects. How does a rock know the existence of a tree?  But they're gravitationally attracting each other. Why don't they gravitationally repel each other? Electrically charged objects sometimes attract each other, and sometimes repel each other, depending on whether they have the same or opposite charges. But we have never observed negative gravity that repel another object, gravitationally. (Non-observance doesn't mean they don't exist, by the way.)

Hypothetically, It's True.  In Reality, It's... A hypothesis is the first stage in attaining a theory. A hypothesis is an attempt to explain the facts as observed. It differs from a law in that it actually tries to explain why these facts are presented as they do. Hypotheses are offered as the first step in the scientific method of understanding natural phenomena. After observation and testing, scientists offer a reason for the phenomenon. That first effort is a hypothesis, a four-syllable word for "guess". The hypothesis gets refined by testing it. There are several ways to test a hypothesis, depending on the phenomenon that is being explained.

After many testing iterations, the hypothesis will mutate to a clearer and larger explanation that explains not just the phenomenon at hand, but other similar phenomena or observables. At that time, the hypothesis may finally graduate to becoming a theory.

It's Just A Theory  A theory is a body of knowledge gained through the process of many experiments, analyses and observations, and passed all sorts of tests attempting to refute the hypothesis. At the end, it becomes the best explanation for the phenomenon at hand. That is how a theory becomes a theory. It not only explains the facts already observed, but additional facts that weren't initially observed, but when observed, meet the predictions from the theory. It gives an explanation, not just a formula. And it gives a formula, if available, that provides predictive value.

The theory of the solar system explains how the planets are arranged and orbit the sun in elliptical orbits and also explains exactly how fast they move (relative to the sun), the weights and dimensions of each planet, the chemical makeup of the planets, where the planets will be ten minutes from now, twenty days from now or two hundred years from now, as well as where they were five million years ago.

Theories don't just answer questions. They also bring about new questions. Questions always come along with the ride. For every answer, there are many new questions. They never end. A solid theory will either answer those questions, or can be expanded to a more encompassing theory that answers those and other questions. And then, new questions arise. That is the never ending cycle of scientific thought.

Today, I walked by a lottery store in Chinatown and noticed that the Mega Millions prize is now up to $290 million.  The Mega Millions was introduced to California in 2005 during Governor Schwarzenegger's tenure.  This lottery is a multi-state lottery with steeper odds while offering a bigger purse compared to the original Super Lotto Plus that was introduced in 1986.

While the $290 million is not the largest ever, it is a staggering amount.  For historical note, the largest payout from the Mega Millions was $390 million in 2007.  The odds of winning the jackpot is currently 1:175,711,536.  (I once taught a math class during summer school and asked the students to explain how the odds were calculated.  It's actually easier to calculate the odds of a jackpot win than the parimutuel partial wins.)

Many years ago, a friend asked me - since I was a math guy - how to pick the numbers to win. I wasn't a statistician nor a probabilist, so I couldn't offer him a definitive answer. Since then, I've learned a bit more and now have a better answer. First off, the probability of any uncertain event (such as the numbers chosen for this lottery), is based on one's totality of experience. The "true" probability of an uncertain event is not a calculable number.

In the face of the lack of enough experience, one could rely on a calculable number, which I'll call the odds here. In standard parlance, odds and probability are two sides of the same coin. The probability of rolling a 2 on a six-sided die is 1/6 or 1:6 (in odds format) without any additional information. If you know some more information, such as how a player rolls, or that the die is weighted, then the probability will change.

(A very good example of how one's probability can change due to gaining information is the tack flip. Take a standard thumb tack. Not the push-pin type with a long head, but the type with a flat head that when firmly pushed in, is almost flush with the wallboard. Toss the thumb tack in the air and let it land. If it lands with the pin sticking straight up, call that "heads." Call it "tails" if it lands with the pin and an edge of the head touching the ground. Now, the question is, what is the probability of getting heads or tails? Before you go ahead trying to model it and computing a number, assume a probability and then do several tosses. Do several hundred tosses. See what you get and see whether your assessment of the probability of heads (or tails) changed over the course of the trials. Another example would be the spork toss. Take a standard plastic spoon or spork. Toss that in the air and let it land. If it lands with the bowl of the spoon concave up (humped), call that heads. If it lands with the bowl of the spoon concave down (as if can hold water), call that tails. Toss a few hundred times and see whether your assessment on the probability changes.)

Anyway, the answer is not to pick "lucky" numbers, as no one number is any luckier than other. Well, that's not quite true. Don't pick any non-integer, don't pick 0 or any negative integers and don't pick any integer greater than 56 for the first five number or greater than 46 for the power number. Other than that, any allowable number is as good as another.

The answer is when to pick the numbers. The key issue is the expected value of the pay-off. Let's assume you only care about the jackpot (in California, with parimutuel payoff, it's impossible to compute the expected value). The expected value is the prize amount times the probability. The result is a dollar amount that equals the "value" of the ticket. The Mega Millions starts off at $12 million. Thus the expected value is $12,000,000/175,711,536, or slightly less than 7¢. That means, the value of a single pick ticket is 7¢.  Of course, you would have to pay $1 to get that.

The value is actually less than the 7¢ when one accounts for the annuity payout and taxes. In many states that play the Mega Millions, you have an option to take the money immediately. In that case, they discount the future value of the annuity to the net present value (NPV). The discounted value is about 60% of the annuity value. So that $12 million, paid out over 26 years, is worth $7.2 million in immediate cash if you wish to take it out as such.  Now subtract the federal tax of 30% or so, you net about $5 million. So the expected value of a single-pick winning ticket is 2.8¢. Those are pretty dismal pay-offs. In Vegas and all other state licensed casinos, the expected value for every game of chance is set so that it is no less than 80¢ to the dollar, more or less.

So, when you play is important than what numbers you play, with the lottery. When the jackpot amount equals $175 million or more, then it's time to consider playing. Yes, you have to discount the future pay-out to its net present value, a 40% loss; then another 30% of the NPV for taxes. Basically, take 42% of the jackpot prize amount, and that's your take-home, but since no one ever takes into account this discount and if they managed to win, they're not sorry that it's less than half of the listed prize amount, the listed amount is a good enough gauge.

But there's more. That net amount assumes you're the sole winner. The prize is split equally among all ticket holders, so if there are three tickets sold with the winning number, all three ticket holders take a one-third share of the amount. At the beginning of a rising jackpot, the chances of matched winning tickets is relatively small. But as the jackpot grows, more players enter and the probability of matched winning tickets grow, so the expected value again starts to drop. There's no definitive rule of when the optimal prize amount is, balancing the high pay-off with lack of multiple winning tickets, because the decision on when to play is based on individuals' feelings on whether $100 million is a big amount or whether $200 is a big amount (worthy to put in a buck or two). It may well be that the expected value of the Mega Millions game is never greater than $1.

What's the point of the expected value?  Let's illustrate with a simpler model.  Suppose I have a four-sided die (tetrahedron die, for those who've played D&D), a perfectly fair die. You pay $1 to play in the game. If I roll a 1, you earn $3 plus your $1 back, for a total of $4. If I roll 2, 3, or 4, you get nothing. The expected value of this game is $1: $4 x .25  (for roll of 1) + $0 x .25 (for roll of 2) + $0 x .25 (for roll of 3)  + $0 x .25 (for roll of 4) = $1. If I return $5 (which includes your $1) for a roll of 1, nothing for the rest, the EV is $1.25, and that's is a good bet. If I return $2 (which includes your $1), the EV is 50¢, a bad bet. If the EV is greater than the ante, go for it.  If the EV is less than the ante, don't go for it.

But there are other factors in play. There's the person's risk aversion. It's one thing to throw away a buck on a four-sided die game or even the lotto. It's quite another to throw away $100,000 on a four-sided die game with an expected value of $200,000 (return doubles your money). There's been studies (by Tversky and Kahnemann, people I've written about before) that show the irrationality of human decision making under these situations. Another factor in play is the entertainment value of the game. For many people, the 90¢ loss in the difference between the expected value and the ticket cost is considered the "entertainment fee". You're having fun, dreaming of that multimillion dollar home, trips to Ibiza, new Lamborghini. Indeed, poker, a popular game at casino guarantees the house a cut, the vig, so the table, as a whole, loses money to the house. Yet, people have fun playing against each other, enjoying the camaraderie, the drinks, the chatting and so forth. That's the entertainment value of the vig.

Ok, now here's the interesting thing about the Mega Millions. Before 2005, when the Mega Millions entered California's lottery options, the only other million-dollar pay-off game was the SuperLotto. I remember listening on the radio about SuperLotto ad spots telling me of an $80 million jackpot or a $100 million jackpot. I even remember a segment on the Gene Burns show on KGO talking about a huge $200 million or so jackpot. But now that we have the Mega Millions lottery, I rarely see the SuperLotto jackpot over $16 million. Are there more frequent SuperLotto winners? Are there fewer players so that the SuperLotto jackpot doesn't increase as quickly?  What's really happening here?  When is the SuperLotto ever going to break, say, $50 million?  That's the weird curiosity.

Rush Limbaugh has said a lot of mean and nasty things about various people over the years.  He maligned Iraq war veterans who felt that the war was wrongly contested and that there was no clear exit to the conflict.  He, of course, opposed gays, blacks, mexicans, chinese, union members... I could go on, but the litany is not necessary.

However, this latest barrage of hate against Sandra Fluke will prove the un-doing of Rush.  It's not so much what he said or whom he talked about or what policy he disagreed with.  What's different now versus then is the crowd sourcing of reputation.  He cannot escape it now.

It used to be people of his ilk would make up some prickly comment, get a lot of people's dander up, maybe cause some advertisers to back off. Then, the fuming disappears, the advertisers return, and those who were irked by his comments would stew with impotent rage at the lack of counter-actions.

But not anymore. Rush took three days of pot-shots at Sandra Fluke's sexual history (which is all the more weird, because Fluke's testimony was about a female friend of hers who had trouble navigating through Georgetown's bizarre catholic-based health plans, and in doing so, lost an ovary). Rush's apology was not even close to being enough. And further, Rush's non-apology apology was basically, "I apologize to you, Ms Fluke, despite that I am still sticking to my position that you're a slut and the government shouldn't be paying for you to be a slut; at least without the citizens getting something prurient back in return." Really, he still stood by his inane claim that it's wrong for the government to pay for her health care.

As some of you know, I'm a big fan of the current Web 3.0 business model. The model connects people with demands to people with supplies. There's a small transaction fee and, bam, done. The beauty is that there's always a need, at varying amount of fees people are willing to pay. And there is always a supply, also priced at varying levels to meet the need. Without those variations, it's hard to make the exchange.

So I signed up with RelayRides in February, but didn't hear from them until late July. I finally got around to setting up the RelayRides' installation of the remote entry device in my car. On the technical end, the way it works is that users get a card that they "badge" themselves into the car. Only users who reserved the car via the website will have an activated card for that car, and only for the duration of the reservation. The car's key is located in the car. It is impossible for anyone to just use the car key without authorization by breaking into the car and using the key.

In fact, I love relayrides just for the increased safety it offers. GPS tracking (I don't get to see where the car goes, but relayrides keeps track of where the car is at all times), remote ignition kill for unauthorized use of the car, sensors to determine speed, acceleration... it's like an airplane's blackbox.

How does it work? Users, who are relayrides members, are vetted to determine that they are capable drivers. They get a card, much like a credit card, but without the magnetic strip. The user goes online, finds a car that they like, book it for the time period of interest and go to the car. My car is different than many others in that I use on-street parking, which means it could be anywhere in a 4-block (or more!) radius of my home. In any case, when the user (which includes me) arrives at the car, the driver waves the card next to the relayrides card reader located at the lower left front windshield. That unlocks the car and tells relayrides that the user has accessed the car. The user gets in, puts key into ignition (I have a Prius, but I need to stick the key fob into the keyport nonetheless; no more just pushing the I/O button alone), turns on engine as usual and off the user goes.

So far, in the past 3 weeks, I've had about 6 users, about one every other day. They've all returned the car to a very nice parking spot, returned it as clean as they took it, which is to say "urban clean". Ok, all except the last user. He managed to, apparently, drive the car through some trees and brushes so that the front looked like it hit a deer or something (no dents, but the red markings look like blood). The rear right fender popped out of place, which I fixed with a forceful push. The parking brake pedal's rubber foot pad came off (WTF?), but I also managed to replace it back to its location. All in all, not a good user and I'm sure his chances of borrowing someone else's car has gone down the tubes. I doubt he's still a member.

On the other hand, I made about $230 over the three weeks. That's not bad.

Who should consider using this service? Those who don't drive regularly would be great candidates. I drive the car about once a week. The other six days it sits idle. Might as well get some use into it. To those who suggest that the additional wear and tear isn't worth the extra money, let me say that makes no mathematical sense. I used to drive the car daily when I lived in a car-centric area of the peninsula. Now that I drive once a week and others take it out for a drive once every other day, the car is basically being driven less often than what I used to put on the car. There's only so many hours in a week and there's no way the car will be driven 168 hours in a week. That just won't happen.

Is this service great? Pretty good, I'd say. Keeps the engine lubed by running it once in a while. And it helps out those who don't have a car (or have rented out their car on relayrides). It's great for the city as it removes the demand for parking and car usage.

Go for it!

Ok, so I did sign an NDA (non-disclosure agreement) when I arrived at Google HQ.

But(t) this story has to be reported.  It can't be flushed down the toilet, as it's a real stinker and it ain't crap.

I was at Google HQ this morning for a tech summit.  But enough about that.  I went to use the lavatory to do a #2.  That's a prime number, right?  Well, this is a prime story, so it fits.  Anyway, the toilet is one of these newfangled one that's plugged in to a warm-water line as well as to the power socket.  When you're done excreting, you press the "backdoor hosing" button and a stream of warm water squirts up to your brown eye.  It keeps squirting until you hit the off button (I'm guessing maybe after 10 minutes it'll shut off on its own.)  Then you press the "blow hot air" button to dry you up.

Maybe for some people, this contraption works.  For me, all it did was spread the fertilizer all over the backfield and further wiping caused the paper to fall apart, thereby increasing the amount of work I had to do to recollect the specimen, using more paper to dry and clean the nether regions.

I mean, really, what's wrong with the old fashioned paper-in-hand?  I've been using that since I was at least 4 years old and I think I've mastered the process. So moving to a new process would require that I take another 10,000 hours to become master of that.

So that's what happens when a company's stock goes into the stratosphere:  they flush the money down the toilet with automated butt cleaners.  I hope the NDA doesn't actually cover this little turdbit.

Now, this isn't a dump on Google, but rather on the toilet maker. Although, there is some culpability on the purchaser's behalf.