Author Archives: Michael Froomkin

Hardball

Obama campaign’s new ad:

Posted in 2012 Election | 1 Comment

Creating Miami’s Future as a Technology Center

If anyone can pull of the trick of turning Miami into a communications technology center, it’s probably Manny Medina (and the smart people on his team).

Thus, this excerpt from his profile in today’s Herald is the sign of something that could be A Very Big Deal:

Q: You’re working with local leaders to initiate a not-for-profit Tech Conference of the Americas in Miami. When will it happen? Can you tell us what you’ve got in mind? How do you think it will help the region?

As I attended technology conferences in San Francisco, Las Vegas, New York, etc., I was always amazed how any one of them would attract from 100,000 to 250,000 participants. Some conferences actually transform the entire city.

I began to ask why we couldn’t do this in South Florida. The answer was always that we could not compete with Silicon Valley, the Research Triangle, etc. My view is that we do not need to compete, we need to use our number one asset — that we are the undisputed capital of Latin America for everything except technology. Therefore, why not launch a Tech Conference in South Florida to serve as the technology bridge between Latin America and the rest of the world?

Circumstances today create the perfect storm for us to do this. The economic meltdown in Europe and the slowdown in North America are making Latin America substantially more attractive for technology companies. At the same time, Latin American enterprises and governments have an insatiable appetite for the transfer of this new technology.

The conference has to have three main attributes: It needs to be substantive. In other words, tackle real issues facing the industry today like cloud computing, cyber security, big data, analytics, etc.; it needs to be a great networking event; and lastly, it must be fun. I could not think of a better venue than South Florida.

If we think of Art Basel’s impact in our community, I am convinced that making South Florida the Tech Capital of Latin America could have as big if not a bigger impact. The idea has been overwhelmingly embraced by local leaders. We have already secured a few hundred thousand dollars of funding. The goal is to have the first annual conference in the Spring of 2014. Over the next few months, we will be reaching out to the broader community to invite everybody to join us and help make this annual conference a major success for our community.

I hear that the conference has reserved space for 2014.

Posted in Miami, Sufficiently Advanced Technology | Comments Off on Creating Miami’s Future as a Technology Center

Romney in a Venn Diagram

I love this Mitt Romney graphic:

venn diagram

It’s from Upworthy, via Mitt, Venn and Now, via Crooks & Liars, Is There Anything Funnier Than Romney Surrogates Accusing Obama of Running a Dishonest Campaign?.

Posted in 2012 Election, Politics: The Party of Sleaze | Comments Off on Romney in a Venn Diagram

Random Citation Watch

I have a search on Google Scholar that lets me know when a paper of mine has been cited. It’s very interesting to see the odd places my work washes up. But every so often there’s a truly mysterious citation, and today’s is a new contender for the bizzaro record holder: Ravshan Rakhmanov and Nigora Safarova Olimovna, Sources Of Violence Seen In Biosocial Nature Of Man, 1 Asian Journal Of Social Sciences & Humanities 142 (2012).

The authors, who identify as being from the Department of Social Studies, Navoi Pedagogical Institute, Republic Of Uzbekistan, have written a short (3.4 page) paper on, well, something. Here is the conclusion:

However, the violence generating terror is effective only for the solution of tactical problems. In the strategic plan, sooner or later it leads to psychological exhaustion: people get tired of being afraid and then a long terror seldom happens to be effective. Anyway never happens to be constant. Any violence should be proved – the nature of human thinking demands it. Especially it is related to political violence. Certainly the relation of a society and a state to violence is defined by many reasons – history and cultural traditions of the people, a certain political and economic situation, personal qualities of those who have power, the level of development or structures of the civil society or on the contrary. However abstracting from concrete conditions and features of this or that country, it is possible to allocate some factors promoting the fact that violence becomes not extreme but a necessary action and norm and a part of official political ideology of the state. The relation of a democratic state to violence is connected with such sight at the person. It is supposed to be only as an exclusive measure in relation to minority of the population. The mass political violence is essentially rejected. An opposite view on a person, disbelief that people are inclined to voluntary follow the standard norms of behaviour and they are silly and aggressive by nature, of course leads to a conclusion about the necessity to constrain the destructive tendencies inherent in people by force or threat to apply it. The consequence of such approach is justification of political violence and, as a whole, orientation to dictatorship. Really, if to agree that historical process is chaotic and leads to destruction and death, the violent measures used to resist such chaos and destruction can be perceived not only as quite comprehensive but also as even humane and necessary and the accompanying violence to the victim – as inevitable.

I’ve read it twice and am afraid to do so again in case I get cross-eyed.

The citations are gloriously multi-lingual (English, German, and something Cyrillic) and I suspect beautifully random. In addition to my Wrong Turn in Cyberspace article the bibliography includes works with titles such as “Network-Centric Operations Case Study: Air-to-Air Combat With and Without Link”, “Handbook of Telecommunications Economics” and — my favorite — “Skew-Tolerant Circuit”.

Posted in Readings | 1 Comment

Why (or Rather How & When) the Stock Market Outperforms Other Investments

This discovery, reported by Kevin Drum is very very odd:

They examined stock market returns over the past two decades and discovered that virtually all of the excess return occurs in a series of 24-hour periods eight times a year. Take away those 24-hour periods, and stock market returns are about what you’d expect them to be.

So what are these 24-hour periods? They’re the periods from noon the day before Federal Reserve announcements until 2:15 on the day of the announcement. During those periods, stocks rise an average of about 50 basis points. That’s the red line in the chart on the right. During every other three-day period, stocks do nothing on average. That’s the black line at the bottom of the chart.

What does this mean in aggregate? Since 1994, the S&P 500 has risen from about 400 to 1300. If you remove the three-day periods surrounding FOMC announcements, it’s barely risen at all.

Huh?

Posted in Econ & Money | Comments Off on Why (or Rather How & When) the Stock Market Outperforms Other Investments

Get Your LIBOR Scandal Updates

Latest news and reactions at Blenderlaw (U. Miami prof Caroline Bradley).

Posted in Econ & Money | Comments Off on Get Your LIBOR Scandal Updates