Alinea
Booked with Mike and Benji for an early March dinner. This is supposed to be a top 5 restaurant in the world and includes 24 courses, most just a bite or two. Predicting a 4 way split between love/like/so-so/dislike. Can’t wait

Israel
Had a great time there on Birthright and thinking about potentially going back for an extended trip next year. Very preliminary stages but there are a number of debates like Tel Aviv vs. Jerusalem, doing program vs. just living there, if do program doing internship vs. learning (about Judaism), and if do learning doing co-ed vs. guys only (which is traditionally how it’s done).

I’d sort of like to do learning but these are typically 9-11 months which would be a lot of time off from working, but when older it’s not so easy to just go off to another country for a year.

Camera
After planning these African safaris for the summer I figured getting a high quality camera would be a great investment for remember that trip and many others. Even though I try to do diligent research when buying stuff, especially bigger purchases, I mistakingly was focusing way too much on video functionality and not on stills and other features which are way more important. I ended up getting a Panasonic Lumix GH1 which is a smaller camera that has interchangeable lenses and excellent 1080p HD video.

However, I learned that unless you have a Nikon or Canon, for the most part, the lens selection is very weak. There were no high quality superzoom lenses and the main one that did zoom a lot didn’t have vibrancy reduction.

So after realizing this mistake I decided on a Nikon since Nikon makes an excellent 200-400mm f4 lens which is known as the ultimate safari lens. The only lenses that are superior quality have fixed lengths (no zooming). These may be good for professionals but it seems like it’d be a lot harder to get good shots without zooming especially without being able to position ourselves in most cases. So the full setup that I got is:

This isn’t my actual stuff. The 2nd from the left is the same camera w/ the 200-400 lens..huge!

• Nikon D700
• 14-24mm f2.8
• 50mm f1.4
• 70-200 f2.8
• 200-400 f4

Learned some basics so far and looking forward to figuring out more, definitely harder than it looks.

We arrived in the Bahamas in the afternoon and quickly got into a cab headed for the Atlantis. We were there for the PCA poker tournament (I didn’t play) so there were a ton of poker players all over. My friend had a tournament package which included a room in the all-suite new Cove tower. This tower is a bit off of the main area/casino but had some nice perks like the great view, a big room with 2 separate areas, a balcony with a great ocean view, and a huge bathroom.

We were to be there for 8 nights and were all excited about a long week of relaxing. Unfortunately the weather was much colder than usual, in the 60’s most days and only hit the 70’s on 1 or 2 days. One of those days we used to hit the lazy river and to go on a couple slides, but we didn’t have a chance to do all the slides or something like swimming with the dolphins that we had been hoping to do. There were PokerStars sponsored parties on a couple nights. The first had good food but not much else and the second had Kelly Rowland of Destiny’s Child singing, but not much else (other than free drinks).

The main cool thing that I was able to do was get a short poker lesson (more like a Q&A) from the professional player Elky. It was just 4 of us and him + a PokerStars rep. My dad’s coworker’s friend had won the lesson and invited me to come along, which was very nice of him. After the lesson PokerStars took all of us out to dinner at Carmine’s on their tab. This meal was delicious and even though every entree was intended to be family style we all ordered at least 1 thing each. We should’ve gotten the hint when after 3 of us ordered entrees the waitress started to walk away. Can’t remember exactly what I had but I did finish almost an entire chicken and a full pasta family dish, leading to an email being sent questioning how I eat so much by Mike, the one who invited me.

I also began an additional stage of trying new drinks starting that night when the PS rep and a girl got Amarettos at dessert, I got one too. Definitely a desserty drink and smells really good. Taste was average and can’t remember well enough to describe better. The other desserty drink I had was Kahlua + Bailey’s + a banana + chocolate syrup + ice. Can’t remember what he called it but it was very tasty. The Bahamas standard (for me at least) was Bahama Mamas. Now that I can’t use the excuse of drinking the home country’s namesake drink they’re way less cool but still pretty good.

Most days involved waking up around 11 and getting a buffet for brunch at Mosaic. Then we’d walk around or relax in the room and have a lighter meal at Murray’s Deli. Then we’d do dinner followed by hanging out in the room or casino/poker room, and we went to Senor Frog’s/PS stuff a few times. We were constantly hanging out with Krmont22, very good PLO player. Had hoped to meet a few people I play with but was fine settling for krmont. Joking, he’s a good guy whose most frequent activities for the trip were wearing suits and trying to get me to never stop drinking.

There are only 8 or so good dinner restaurants on the resort so we got a chance to try most of them out:
Nobu - everyone says the sushi sucks which seems weird though doesn’t effect me since I don’t like sushi anyway. Had the miso soup and salmon with rice which was pretty good but not amazing.
Chop Stix - won tons in soup are the worst (not the restaurant’s fault). Got a very non-Chinese dish of grilled chicken and rice which was above average but nothing too special.
Mesa Grill - definitely favorite meal there, the salmon was delicious
Seafire Steakhouse - chicken breast was very meh making the baked potato the highlight
Carmine’s - 2nd favorite meal (it was free!) since the portions are huge. Pasta was delicious and chicken was really solid.

After completing the poker I had a flight out to NY in the early AM. I went home and after a bit of mindless web surfing went to sleep for all of about 6 hours at which point I had to leave to catch an early flight to NY. After American Airlines cut the direct flight to the Bahamas from Chicago I figured I might as well head to NY and take the direct flight from there since Jacob and his brother, who I was going to the Bahamas with, are from there. They live on Long Island in a very Jewish community (maybe they all are?) about 40 minutes from the city.

My flight was delayed 5 hours after we had already boarded and were then let off. Something to do with the engine, or perhaps, as his mother said, because I was flying on the holy Sabbath. Due to not shaving during the entire bet saga I had the longest beard I had ever had at this point. We had made an appointment for a haircut (also had been a while) + shave and it also was to include a manicure in the package. The package tier above also included a massage, but opted out of that. After dropping off my stuff and getting a house tour we were about to leave but not before Jacob needed a couple minutes to go to his room for an unknown reason. After that we sped over to the train and arrived as it was coming into sight. We jumped over the tracks as it was approaching and ran to grab the doors, but they closed just as we got there. Jacob's 2 minute room adventure was clearly to blame so we went back to the house and relaxed. We then met up with another friend at Powerhouse, a steakhouse that had great decor but mediocre food presentation/taste and high prices. It got a 1/4 star rating by the NYT.

The next day we made it to the city and although the original shaving place was closed we found another option that was $50 cheaper but didn't include a manicure! It had a mid? 1900's ambiance and my barber was dressed the part. I asked him if he often shaves beards longer than this and he sort of scoffed and said he'd shaved ones that were practically down to the floor. He said his dad was a perfectionist and he's got that in him, which is a good trait in a barber, definitely. That said, the haircut was sort of mediocre and too short, but he used a ton of different scissor types.

After that the plan was to spend some hard earned money in the shops of NY. We went to probably 5 or 6 stores in the brutal cold and ended up with nothing due to a combination of nothing really standing out and the better items being very expensive. Holding back in this situation was something I couldn't have done a few years ago. We went to TGI Friday's (what??!?!) for lunch. I can't imagine a worse choice, especially with the prices being like 1.5x standard.

Throughout this trip I was tending to fall asleep in very random places: trains, taxis, stores, and on their couch while watching a DVD (less random). Our last stop was Macy's where a friend from school met us and found me asleep in a chair. We all went to the 2nd Ave Deli and met up with a couple other people from college. The restaurant was not great. Apparently it was better at its old location. The matzo ball soup was only a bit below average and the brisket was actually reasonable tasting but looked so wretched it was very hard to continue eating so I only ate about 1/4 of it.

After that we headed back and then left for the Bahamas in the morning.

Overall New York was alright. I wish we had done some better restaurant research since all the best restaurants, including some kosher ones, are located there.

2010 Resolutions/Goals

• Update web site weekly at most. Make worthwhile (ie regularly updated so don’t forget details) trip reports.
• Get better at photography. Got a new camera and understand what some settings do but have been shooting almost everything in auto mode because I don’t know when to change the settings and what to change them to; hopefully figure this out pre-Africa.
• Learn Chinese at basic level since hoping to go there early next year
• Use JDate or alternatively meet people in real life

Eating Plans/Rules

• Stick to standard when at home
• Eliminate fast places completely unless a group is (sadly) going there — includes standard fast food like McDonald’s as well as Potbelly/Subway, etc. Much prefer eating standard at home than these places anyway.
• No fried food unless there are no other reasonable options
• Desserts/dairy (includes pizza/popcorn/ice cream, does not include small amount of butter on bread): 24 for the year (starting Feb 1)
• No bread except challah and a tame amount at restaurants
• Try out lots of unique (the type that are all over Bucktown) restaurants (only dessert rules apply here) and foods

2010 Activities

• Taking CFA L2 in June
• Sticking with CrossFit
• 3m VPP in poker - PACE this out

2010 Vacations

I remember talking to a friend named Arthur probably 8 years ago about how happy I was in Chicago/suburbs and how traveling and visiting other places basically sucks because you miss out on things you’re accustomed to — fast Internet, foods we enjoy, familiarity with people and where everything is, ease of communication, etc. I think visiting Israel combined with my trend of trying new things has made me do a complete 180 because while not being able to eat/exercise the same and not having the comfort of home/friends/family has its drawbacks, experiencing other cultures and historical sights and beautiful settings can be amazing.

Here are my planned trips for the year:

• Went to NY/Bahamas for a couple weeks at the beginning of the year. Report to come shortly.
• Australia/New Zealand in late March/early April — family trip since sister will be studying abroad there. Don’t know much about it other than the plane is almost a full day.
• Europe (thinking London/Amsterdam/Rome/Paris/Barcelona) from mid to late June  – last trip to Europe was pretty foul in Milan/San Remo where there was really very little to do. Most excited about Rome and Paris + seeing family in London.
• Africa (Jburg for World Cup quarterfinals/Cape Town/safaris in SA and Botswana) from early July to early Aug — easily looking forward to this the most. The World Cup should be awesome, safaris seem amazing especially in Botswana where it’s pretty isolated and near the great Okavango Delta. Will also be spending 3 weeks doing volunteer work mainly assisting in a school in Cape Town. According to Lee African children love people with cameras so I’ll bust out my Nikon and make a lot of friends fast. Cape Town is supposed to be beautiful with tons of sightseeing, beaches, and golf courses.

2009 was the first full year that I had entirely on my own with no requirements and no boundaries. I got a little carried away (too ambitious) with what I planned on doing, clearly forgetting about my work habits and laziness. The year was made up of 3 distinct periods:

Period 1: Sit around at home
For the first 3ish months of the year I wasn’t very productive (I was a bit burnt out from the amount of poker I had played at the end of 2008 which now seems like a joke), though did watch all of the Wire and Arrested Development, most of the Sopranos, the new season of 24, and probably some other stuff. Went out for meals, sat around on the computer wasting time, etc.

Period 2: Slightly less sitting around at home
For the next 5ish months I was very big on CrossFit workouts and finally started putting in some moderate work hours as well as substantial golf hours.

Other highlights of this period were playing on a pretty unsuccessful yet much more successful than the previous year softball team, passing the June CFA L1 after significant cramming of all subjects (especially accounting), and going to my first peer wedding, which was in mid June in MN.

For those unaware I use a Foreman grill for every non-snack meal (snacks get cold leftover chicken). Now at home I was attempting to keep kosher to the best of my ability which meant the dishwasher was off limits. At the same time hand washing the Foreman grill plates, even with them being removable, was not something I was feeling doing once a day, much less 3 times a day. So up until around this time my mom would clean them out of disgust every few days but by this time the build up had gotten so bad that she refused and I didn’t really care to do it, so I continued cooking over mounds and mounds of black gunk buildup..and people say I don’t like exotic seasonings/flavor! Even though this sounds and probably is pretty gross it actually majorly adds to the flavor.

Period 3: Move to Chicago and sit inside all day
On Sept 1 I moved to Chicago with 3 high school friends. We moved into a new construction duplex on the bottom 2 floors of a 3flat in Lincoln Park. I really really love the place and the floor plan, which is all bedrooms downstairs and 2 living rooms + kitchen + patio upstairs. The separation is perfect and I really like my room — good size, windows viewing out the front, steam shower.

Top 2 things I was looking forward to in Chicago were (a) being around more people my age and (b) checking out new restaurants. Sadly neither of these really happened due to a bet I had made

Poker Bet
On May 30 I was IM’ing with Dan (DCal Zone) about poker and we had been discussing our goals for the year — I proclaimed that I would be playing 3m hands on the year after having only completed about 250k up to that point, which was a pace of about 600k on the year. He very reasonably thought I was nuts and even though the bet didn’t have any requirements for me actually winning, the time commitment requirement alone was enough to bet against me. I won’t say the exact amounts bet here but I gave 3:1 odds and was risking low 5 figures. I contend that offering 3:1 was beneficial to me (though risky) because at 1:1 my motivation would have been substantially lower.

Some solid/obvious foresight there by me and some cockiness from Dan , yet for the next 2 months I only played another 250k hands for a total of 500k of the necessary 1m. During this period I also made the same bet with another friend, thus doubling my action. This puts me at something like 3 hours/day for those months which is super sad. Of course this meant I was getting in frequent golf rounds, working out 5+ times a week, eating very well, and spending lots of time with friends, but not only was the balance awful, I also had the lingering feeling of needing to play these hands over my head constantly, putting a slight drain on everything I was doing.

Between August and Sept I played only another 500k total hands which meant again I was averaging about 3 hours/day. Now I did overhaul my game and move into the new apartment and had to deal with signing papers, the actual moving in, getting Internet set up, etc., but this was still very sad. By the end of September I started to get a bit more concerned because I’ve always put things off but that was usually fixable with a near all nighter or a week of hardcore studying. This was a different and much larger beast. I had 2m hands to go in 3 months. People have made a lot of money on bets to play less than what I needed to average per month over only 1 month and I needed to do this for 3 in a row.

My initial schedule upon moving in had plans for working out regularly, allotting a lot of time for eating, and having a good night sleep every night. Working out was the first to get axed. Then I realized the whole cooking process (and going to the supermarket) was taking too long and decided to get every meal catered in so it could simply be heated up and eaten without any other work. Got these from the Kosher Gourmet in Skokie and they were generally really great. Had scrambled eggs, potatoes, and pancakes for breakfast; a large salad with chicken, hard boiled eggs, corn, tostitos, and romaine for lunch; and alternated between salmon and broccoli, half a chicken and green beans, and brisket and green beans for dinner. I only had them delivered twice a week so they weren’t super fresh on the latest days but was very pleased and this was one of many factors that helped save time.

Since the bet required me to play only 2-4 or higher stakes games often near-died at certain early AM times (not enough games to play) which would lead me to go to sleep and rise for when the games replenished in the morning. However this would tend to set me back more and more because I would miss the prior day’s quota and then often wake up late on the next day again missing the quota. Even with adding in more tables and trying to get in hands faster, the hand requirement per day just kept getting worse and worse. Frequently I would look back to a couple weeks prior and think about how easy that would have been if I would have only kept that pace. Couple ways that I sped things up slightly were sandwiches instead of salads since they took less time to eat, cereal instead of the full breakfast (full breakfast was pretty heavy for morning anyway), and longer sessions to avoid startup/shutdown times.

The pace started off at around 20k/day in September (13-14 hours at a comfortable # of tables) and gradually escalated to around 27k in late November. Things got pretty blurry in November as I was playing nearly 18 hours on most days at the end of the month. So now not only had working out and eating (semi) been compromised, this was starting to dig into sleep and giving essentially 0 free time (omg no hourly facebook checks!). Fortunately a bunch of friends got pretty active on Skype so I wasn’t as isolated as I could’ve been. Also got a couple nice visits from (a) the Madison ss’ing crew and (b) Jacob — definitely nice to meet all these guys for the first time and to break the repetition of every day being the exact same.

Once it got to mid December and I could only sleep for 4-5 hours a night I knew some serious help was needed because oversleeping by even 2 hours could throw everything off. So I hired Dan C. as an assistant for a couple weeks. His duties were basically to wake me up at a prescribed time, heat up dinner, and do a few misc. things as needed. On the 2nd day he “forgot” to wake me up and I overslept by 2 hours. That was obviously no good but we got back on track after that and he even added a snooze feature to his repertoire so I could take quick 20 min naps and add a 10 min snooze period as needed.

I continued to get more and more behind and the last week of December was easily the worst of my life in terms of profit and possibly happiness. I twice stayed awake for ~40 hour periods with only about 1 hour of sleep, which I think completely screwed up my head for the last 16ish hours. Operating the other nights on only 4 hours of sleep was also brutal but not quite as bad. At the same time I was trying to overload on tables, doing probably literally twice as many tables as I’d prefer to be playing and about 1.5x as many as I could manage reasonably. This was a bad combination and led to terrible playing, but with the end of the tunnel visible I just had to finish it out and not care about making mistakes, which became easy as they became more frequent (when you typically only make a massive mistake once a session or less — something super obvious like timing out with Aces or similar — and then start doing it once every 5 minutes, it’s hard to get that mad every time).

In the end I finished with 37 hands over the requirement and about 2 and a half hours to spare. Every single minute of the last day especially was painful and losing the last week made accomplishing the bet sort of bittersweet, but I am very happy about pulling it off and look forward to PACING out in 2010.

The major lesson that I’ve been trying to embed into my head for years is that procrastinating sucks because not only did it worsen the quality of every hand I played, but it also worsened my eating and essentially eliminated all working out and person to person communication other than online. Part of the problem has been being overly ambitious which leads to being overwhelmed and instead of trying to attack everything, just backing off and doing nothing. New update soon on plans for 2010 that I think will be manageable and fun!

Now for real this time I AM going to update this often and will include poker updates as well. Doing these broad updates every few months is way less exciting than picking out fun things on an every few day basis.

Will be playing 85k hands over the next 48 hours then flying to NYC for 2 days and then to the Bahamas for 2 weeks.

Will seriously be better about updating next year. Main NY res is time management and meeting goals w/ normal means not terribly rushed/painful ones!

Also got new camera so will be hopefully taking some good pics (don’t know what I’m doing yet)

“I pledge to update this site at least three times a month”

Not quite true, I’ll try harder. I just finished up the CFA exam this past Saturday. I think it went way better than in December and I’m pretty cautiously optimistic overall. On my practice test I did poorly on accounting so I spent most of my time studying that and felt like the accounting and math questions went very well, but some econ and fixed income and semi-random questions I had to guess on.

This weekend I’ll be making my first venture into the state of Minnesota for a wedding. Will try to take some video on my new camera.

I was thinking about things that make me automatically biased to disliking people:

• Waiter or waitress chewing gum - completely unacceptable
• People in gym who use the crunch machine with the very likely mission of thinking if they use that for long enough the fat around their stomach will magically vanish
• People who believe that renting is equivalent to “throwing money away”
• People who don’t use turn signals in situations that result in danger and/or less efficient travel for others
• The entire family of kids who are crying in public/on air planes
• People who don’t like or refuse to try watching The Wire
• Cheaters

I’ll probably think of more later. Post others/thoughts to comments!

Chair

I ordered the Herman Miller Embody chair last week in black:

3 Dinners

I had 3 classic chicken and rice dinners back to back to back which is now a rarity for me, though it was my go-to standard a year or so ago.

Tsukasa

Tsukasa — went with Dan and Peter. We were lead to our table within 2 minutes and then once we got there there was a major communication/language barrier/clueless happening. We basically stood in front of our table for about 40 seconds while being unsure of where to sit or if that was even our table (each table has 8 people at it and parties are mixed if smaller than 8). It was pretty hectic and then a man tried to claim our seats, which would have been good, but the hostess made sure we got them.

Then during the meal the ceiling started to leak about 2 feet to my left right in between two tables. This caused a delay because the chefs cook on the table so ours would have put our food tray in this space and the chef at the adjacent table was using the only other possible space. Once that chef finished and ours started, he first tipped over part of the tray, leaving multiple pieces of meat on the floor. This was pretty much the third unique happening of the meal and we hadn’t even gotten our food yet.

Once he started cooking the rice a large drop of water hit my plate from above. The leak had expanded! This continued to happen and the drops started splattering and hitting me. The problem is we couldn’t just move because our food was being cooked on this table and the cooking show is crucial. So I just started eating on my lap until Peter finished his rice (that was all he was having) and then I took his spot and he withdrew his seat from the table. This wasn’t so bad and they were very attentive at fixing the problem. Tsukasa continues to reign as Japanese restaurant king!

Flat Top Grill

Went for Dan H’s 22nd birthday. He arrived almost an hour late due to various events so we decided, with a probable rudeness level of like 2/10, that we’d go get our food before he got there. Of course he got there shortly after we got our food and I was the only one who had actually received it when he got there making me look like a prick. I was also introduced to the eating uncooked food trick by Sam R during my prior visit. This is when you put some rice and whatever other stuff you want in the bowls that you normally give them to cook for you — but now you just take it back to your seat and eat out of it. This can help tide you over during busy times when food can take a while. But on the other hand you’re about to get unlimited food for no extra cost, why fill up on mediocre uncooked things?

After eating I went back to the AEPi house and learned played Smash on 64 vs. Gomez which started off with 1v1 games where one of us destroyed the other (me two then him one, then me one) except after that he just pummeled me like 8 times in a row or something insane. We then played Settlers of Catan which was pretty complicated at first and the strategy still seems kind of tough, but it definitely feels like a much better game than Monopoly. There were also fun fights during it about how people were trying to scam me with trades.

Sweet & Sour Chicken at Home

This is the only thing my mom has cooked in the past 10 years that has more than 3 ingredients. It was tasty as usual (where usual means it is tasty when it happens but  it almost never happens).

Empire Chicken Breasts

I haven’t done any scientific tests but I do eat a lot of chicken and am convinced these are the best breasts around. They even have organic ones at the supermarket sometimes now! I had once mentioned that there was a debate between these and Wise Organic breasts, but now that they have organic too that’s pretty much a wash. Though I’m not sure if Empire is really that much tastier than Wise or if it’s because I get Empire fresh and Wise frozen.

Israel Final Update

I still want to make a final Israel post that talks about all the people on the trip and some thoughts on religion. I can’t believe it’s already been 3 months since that happened.

Added Fitness Log and To Do List

I’ve added a fitness log and to do list to the top page bar. You most likely don’t care much about either but I’m hoping the to do makes me more accountable and useful and the log should be good to keep everything sorted by date and track my progress with CrossFit.

1. I joined Twitter. It’s simple and awesome. Added sidebar to right side. That means very little real blogging about “I did X,Y,Z” and more useful and thought provoking posts like this one (this was originally a joke because the whole post was these 3 thoughts — this post may actually be useful and thought provoking now but I would never have joked about that if I actually thought it might be). Add me if you’re on there!
2. I’ve noticed a trend: people don’t cover their mouths when they cough. I estimate that 75% of coughs I’ve seen over the past year have been uncovered. Isn’t this bad etiquette?
3. I realized that I might have been making a mistake for a while. Is shampoo women’s only unless stated otherwise? Or is it unisex? I’m too impatient to find out and just bought one that says MEN on it to avoid any problems.

TIME magazine made a list of 10 ideas that are changing the world right now (http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1884779_1884782,00.html).

1. Jobs are the new assets — Our job and education/training are worth a lot. It’s not all about the stock market and other traditional investments. Agreed and my age group is kind of lucky to have experienced this early on so we know how much to value our “human capital” and know the importance of risk management.
2. Recycling the suburbs — Suburbs are dying due to fewer families with kids and more people wanting to be in urban areas. We have to remake closed down stores/malls into mixed use developments or even libraries/schools. Sounds good except with people leaving the suburbs why do we need more offices/libraries/schools/apartments?
3. Calvinism — The belief that a God operates/micromanages everything and that all outcomes are predetermined. Do not believe
4. Reinstating the interstate — Instead of just fixing up the highways, also adding a light-rail and power-grid system to them. “Envision a system in which you drive to a light-rail station along the interstate, plug into a smart grid at the parking lot and ride the train to work while your car recharges.” This sounds awesome and makes me wish I were younger cause if it takes years to add a lane to residential street, it seem like it’ll be decades before this gets going, even in major cities.
5. Amortality — “To live in the same way, doing and consuming much the same things, from late teens right up until death.” Like how I wore khaki pants and a sweatshirt every day in high school and 50 year old men now wear Abercrombie polos with popped collars. I definitely do see this a lot and much prefer the younger people acting older than the older acting younger. If I see one more bald man wearing shorts that go significantly below the knees I’m gonna be mad.
6. Africa, business destination — Positive things are happening in Africa for the most part, they offer the world’s highest rate of return on investment, and they avoided the derivatives/sub-prime mortgage disasters. China even loves them! Africans also feel degraded by long-term charity and feel much better when able to work for it. I’ve always loved Africa and am glad things are improving there. Microfinancing sites like www.kiva.org are pretty cool — they let you invest in small projects for poor people, like a woman who needs help buying supplies to start a new business. Then once their business gets going they repay the loan and you can invest it again. This is basically a mix between a charitable gift and a loan.
7. The rent-a-country — Countries are renting land from other countries to grow food because they have better growing conditions. Whatever keeps the carrots and grapes flowing
8. Biobanks — Starting a safehouse for tissue samples, tumor cells, DNA, and blood to research new treatments for diseases. “You put your biomaterial in and earn medical interest in the form of knowledge and therapies that grow out of that deposit.” This reminds me of airline security — pay the price of less privacy to much improve our chances of safety/survival. I’ve very pro this type of thing cause I think the benefits significantly outweigh the risks. Yes, the TSA officer can know that I have an unhealthy addiction to The Wire and always travel with every DVD and at least 5 clothing articles, as long as my flight is safe. Yes, the biobank operator can know that I’m predisposed to being ADD (I’m not officially but might be!), as long as future generations can be disease free.
9. Survival stores — People aren’t buying things at regular stores. Instead of just discounting regular old merchandise, this new store concept would sell necessities like cheap food, clothing built to last, bikes, and other essentials. They would be straightforward and also offer advice/experiences like yoga or financial advice or perhaps computer help. I don’t know, I think this concept of a one stop shop for necessities (since we assume people will be cutting back on luxuries even after the recession ends) could work depending on how it’s done. Basically I think they’d have to offer services that are competitive with specialists in stuff like financial advice or personal fitness advice. Also with so much of this being available on the Internet why pay for it?
10. Ecological intelligence — We could make smarter decisions if we knew the full ecological impact — carbon/social/biological footprints that effect our every decision. http://www.goodguide.com/ rates a bunch of products.  I think the survival stores (#9) concept would be even better if it took this into account. I really like this idea and would absolutely buy products/services with a better ecological impact, all else equal (or maybe being slightly more expensive).

I kind of like doing article reviews like that mostly cause it makes me read the article carefully and think about it (greedy!), maybe I’ll start doing them regularly.