OK, I'm a sucker for "free" money. Ted Leonsis and Steve Case of AOL fame have started a new company to do electronic funds transfer, like PayPal, but without the fees for person to person transfer. I don't get their business model yet, but they're giving $25 to people who sign up for new accounts before May 15, 2008. They're also giving $10 for referrals, so if this sounds interesting to you, click the link below so we both get a little something...

(Thanks to Leslie for the tip. She got my $10...)

I am unspeakably sad about the passing of a 4.5 month old girl I've never met. Emma was the daughter of two people I know through work, Matt and Ellen Kowalczyk. They're really acquaintances, but I feel incredibly close to them now. As Emma fought for her life, Matt blogged and Twittered about what was going on. After a mutual friend told me what was going on, I started following the story and got to know them through this very personal struggle, until it ended today with this Twitter

Goodbye, Emma, my sweet little fighter. You gave more to this world than most people give their entire lives. We love you. http://is.gd/4rM about 4 hours ago from twhirl

and this post. Ellen's Facebook status was another peek into what was going on.

At first, I admit I was a bit taken aback by how public they were being, but as with Chris' kidney thing earlier this year, I think the openness helped bring more of their extended network of friends in to support them. I'm guessing the writing was a helpful outlet as well.

I'm not sure if we'll ever be as open; we tend to be pretty private (even the kid stories I write about are highly selective and edited). That said, I feel privileged that the Kowalczyks shared their lives with me for a little while and let me know their daughter and her strength.

It's easy to think of the Internet as dehumanizing relationships, replacing personal contact with email, Twitters, and IM. In some cases it is, but with Emma and Chris, I was able to share a much deeper relationship and get much more insight into their lives than I probably ever would have in the pre-net world, and I'm grateful.

This is a great article from Mechanix Illustrated magazine, written in November 1968, speculating what life in 2008 would be. I thought this was especially interesting since I was born in 1968.

They were close in a few places:

• TV phone in your car: well, cellphones with video are close
• US population at 350mm: Currently, it's approximately 304mm
• "The single most important item in 2008 households is the computer.": Got that right (well it's at least one of the most important items in 2008 households.)
• "Money has all but disappeared. Employers deposit salary checks directly into their employees’ accounts. Credit cards are used for paying all bills.": Yup.
• "You simply press a combination of buttons and the pages flash on your home screen. The world’s information is available to you almost instantaneously.": Almost. They thought this information would come through the TV, not the computer.

Of course, there are a few doozies:

• No 250mph air cushioned, self-driving cars gliding over smooth plastic roads.
• No domed cities with moving sidewalks.
• No passenger rockets or hypersonic planes.
• No undersea resorts.
• No protein-rich algae processed into steak-tasting "meat".
• Heart disease not eliminated by drugs and diet.

And I really wish I had that 21st century commodity -- the intelligence pill.

I think our world is cooler in some ways (PCs, the Internet, and cellphones to name a few), but in many ways, I think we haven't delivered on the hopes of forty years ago. I want my rocket ship!

(Thanks to EricLaw for the pointer.)

I admit, I'm an idiot when it comes to the workings of the financial market, so I don't really get what happened with Bear Stearns, the subprime mortgage crisis, etc. Fortunately, I have friends who get this stuff and can explain it.

First, my old high school (and elementary school) friend Chooky has a (long), reasonably plain-English explanation of the collapse of Bear Stearns. Here's a bit to give you a taste.

So what happened with Bear Stearns? Very simply if we think of them as a hedge fund that is massively leveraged then all you need to go wrong is for their assets to go down in value enough that some bad things start to happen. Those assests that went bad started with the securitized mortgages above. Instead of selling all their mortgage tranches off to hedge funds and pension funds Bear Stearns kept some of them. These are called residuals. All the primary investment banks kept some of these tranches. Why? Well, they had good returns. Often the tranches they kept were the worst - the equity tranche. Sometimes they kept them because they couldn't sell them to anyone. They should have known better but again you have people shooting for the moon. They could lose their job but they could also be retired by next year.

My college friend, Adam Nash, added to this with a pointer to the presentation to JP Morgan investors in the JPMorgan/Bear Stearns deal and a link to a rude but funny stick figure explanation of the subprime mess.

Good thing I have smart friends with blogs to explain stuff to me. Check it out.

Perfect.

See the original here, with links to get t-shirts, etc.

This video is an "abridged history of American-centric war, from World War II to present day, told through the foods of the countries in conflict." It's brilliant and well done.

 

Visit Tourist Pictures for a breakdown of the battles and the cheat sheet of the foods used.

Michael Chang, the professional tennis player, was elected to the International Tennis Hall of Fame recently. (Here's the NY Times article on the matter.)

Michael probably doesn't remember, but his mom was my babysitter for a summer a long time ago back in Minnesota. There weren't tons of Chinese families in the area at the time; they lived near us, so our families were social. I think my parents are still in touch with his.

I have a distinct memory of playing ping pong with Michael and his older brother Carl. Michael was barely tall enough to see over the table, but he was quick and aggressive, slamming the ball despite his height.

They moved away to California so the boys could play tennis more earnestly. Obviously, it was a good call.

Michael was the first world-class Asian-American professional athletes I can recall. The whole community rallied behind him; even today he's a big celebrity in the Chinese-American community.

I see on Wikipedia that he lives on Mercer Island here in Seattle. Maybe I'll run into him again sometime. (For more, here's his official site.)

Anyway, congrats, Michael!

As I mentioned last week, we took the boys to see the Seattle Symphony perform a show called "PLAY! A Video Game Symphony". The symphony played songs from various video games.

The concert was enjoyable. There were three large screens suspended over the symphony showing scenes from the games. While the scenes weren't set to the music, it was helpful to see the games with the music and fun to see old school stuff like the original Zelda or Mario games.

They also showed close-ups of the musicians playing; since we were about three rows from the back of the auditorium in the highest balcony, it was especially nice see musicians doing their thing. I wish they did this in all symphony performances.

I admit I was a little surprised by the quality of the scores. While some of the songs like Super Mario Brothers were just fun and nostalgic, the newer scores were often beautiful. Since video games have become as huge financially as movies (bigger now, I think), I guess it makes sense that they can attract a similar caliber of composer for games as movies. They sometimes felt a bit formulaic (for example, almost every fighting game broke into a martial snare drum beat), but I'm this may have been just the samples they chose. As a Microsoft guy, I was pleased how good the medley from HALO was; in particular, the opening bars of the HALO theme are really distinctive.

One interesting note: two of the composers, Jeremy Soule and Martin O'Donnell, were in the audience - not something I've seen before since most classical music composers are, well, dead.

The boys were well-behaved through the concert, although by the end of the three hour performance, Michael (7) was getting sleepy and fidgety (I was too). Andrew (10) really loved it though. All in all, it was a good first symphony experience for them.

In case you're curious, here's the program:

Nobuo Uematsu	Play! Opening Fanfare
Nobuo Uematsu/Square Enix	FINAL FANTASY VII-Liberi Fatali
Koji Kondo/Nintendo	Super Mario Bros
Takenobu Mitsuyoshi/Sega	Shenmue
Joel Eriksson/Electronic Arts	Battlefield 1942
Nobuo Uematsu/Square Enix	FINAL FANTASY VII-Aerith's Theme
Masato Nakamura/Sega	Sonic the Hedgehog
Tappy Iwase/Konami	Metal Gear Solid
Yoko Shimomura&Kikaru Utada/Disney/Square Enix	Kingdom of Hearts
Jeremy Soule/Bethasoft/UbiSoft	THE ELDER SCROLLS IV: OBLIVION
Nobuo Uematsu/Square Enix	FINAL FANTASY SERIES-Swing de Chocobo
Yasunori Mitsuda/Square Enix	Chrono Trigger/Chrono Cross
Jason Hayes/Blizzard	World of Warcraft
Akira Yamaoka/Konami	Silent Hill 2
Martin O'Donnell/Microsoft	HALO
Koji Kondo/Nintendo	The Legend of Zelda
Nobuo Uematsu/Square Enix	FINAL FANTASY VII-One Winged Angel

They also played a special additional score by Jeremy Soule, although I missed the title.

I've said it before, the Japanese are weird. These videos are part of a set that apparently tries to teach English through a weird combination of skits and dancing; while this is nutty enough, the phrases they choose are odd and funny.

Here are a few gems:

Next week, the Seattle Symphony will be performing a show called "PLAY! A Video Game Symphony", described as:

Watch graphics from your all-time favorite blockbuster video games—including Super Mario Bros.,^® HALO^® and The Legend of Zelda^®—on the big screen while Seattle Symphony, Vocalpoint! Seattle and Northwest Boychoir perform the soundtrack.

They have a show next Thursday (1/24) at 7:30pm and a matinee Saturday, 1/26 at 1:00pm. Both shows are at the incredible Benaroya Hall. Unfortunately, it's not cheap; the lowest priced tickets are about $50 each with most of those sold out on Thursday already.

In any case, I thought it would be a fun way to introduce the boys to the symphony, so we're going to one of the shows. I'll let you know how it is.