The stock market....

The stock market is a weird world, isn't it?
The reason for the rhetorical question is due to reading a bbc article on the bbc, "Technology - the party really is over".

What I don't get is the volatility of it all. There are articles out there that say that any comment or "random" event can cause major fluctuations in a companies stick. For instance take this article about a citizen journalist who claimed on iReport.com that Steve Jobs had had a heart attack. As a result apple stock dropped more than 2%. Give me a break! That's like me changing Steve Jobs wikipedia profile to add "Steve has confided to friends that by the end of 2008 he will be in a comfortable position to retire." A quote that is completely untrue and probably would be edited out very quickly, but nonetheless, if it is then quoted a few times with some bold headline "STEVE JOBS SET TO RETIRE" the impact could be substantial but completely unnecessary.
Another example of this can be seen with the United Stock when it was announced that they were going bankrupt in September 2008, unfortunetly the article was from 2002... The result:
"After trading around $12 a share Monday morning, the stock of United parent company, UAL Corp., dropped at least as low as $4.62 about five minutes after the ISA article was posted on the Bloomberg terminal. The shares fell as low as $3 before Nasdaq halted trading less around 11 a.m. EDT" Herald Tribute

Back to the original point. Looking at the current apple chart at the moment:

$200 - $90 in a few months...

Even with the credit crunch this is astonishing. Fair enough, with the banks failing, loans defaulting and large credit card bills many cannot afford to go on spending sprees. Honestly though, who is not going to buy an apple product in the next year?!? I'ld go a step further, which parents at christmas are going to get requests from their kids, for ipods, iphones, imacs, itunes...

Furthermore, the news recently for apple has been fairly decent:
- they were successful against the NMPA against raising music royalties
- they successfully launched a new ipod and iphone with the other phone and palm manufacturers playing catchup at the moment
- there is positive speculation of a rumoured under $1000 laptop

So to answer my initially question:
Yes Piers, the stock market is indeed a weird world!

A few jokes to liven up the day

The intellectual capacity of kiwi rugby greats:

"Nobody in Rugby should be called a genius. A genius is a guy like Norman Einstein." - (Jono Gibbs - Chiefs)

"I'm going to graduate on time, no matter how long it takes." - (Rodney So'ialo - Hurricanes) on University

"You guys line up alphabetically by height." and "You guys pair up in groups of three, then line up in a circle." - (Colin Cooper -Hurricanes head coach)

Chris Masoe (Hurricanes) on whether he had visited the Pyramids during his visit to Egypt: "I can't really remember the names of the clubs that we went to."

"He's a guy who gets up at six o'clock in the morning regardless of what time it is." - Colin Cooper on Paul Tito

Kevin Senio (Auckland), on Night Rugby vs Day Games "It's basically the same, just darker."

David Nucifora (Auckland) talking about Troy Flavell "I told him, 'Son, what is it with you. Is it ignorance or apathy?' He said, 'David, I don't know and I don't care.'

David Holwell (Hurricanes) when asked about the upcoming season: "I want to reach for 150 or 200 points this season, whichever comes first."

"Andy Ellis - the 21 year old, who turned 22 a few weeks ago"(Murray Mexted)

"Colin has done a bit of mental arithmetic with a calculator." (Ma'a Nonu)

"He scored that try after only 22 seconds - totally against the run of play." (Murray Mexted)

"We actually got the winning try three minutes from the end but then they scored." (Phil Waugh-Waratahs)

"I've never had major knee surgery on any other part of my body." (Jerry Collins)

"That kick was absolutely unique, except for the one before it which was identical." (Tony Brown)

"I owe a lot to my parents, especially my mother and father." (Tana Umaga)

"Sure there have been injuries and deaths in rugby - but none of them serious." (Doc Mayhew)

"If history repeats itself, I should think we can expect the same thing again." (Anton Oliver)

"I would not say he (Rico Gear) is the best left winger in the Super 14, but there are none better." (Murray Mexted)

"I never comment on referees and I'm not going to break the habit of a lifetime for that prat." (Ewan McKenzie)

Murray Deaker: "Have you ever thought of writing your autobiography?" Tana Umaga: "On what?"

"Well, either side could win it, or it could be a draw."(Murray Mexted)

"Strangely, in slow motion replay, the ball seemed to hang in the air for even longer."(Murray Mexted)

Source:jokesrus@netspace.net.au

Wired Motion Contest

Wired has got another Contest to do with Photos in motion.



This is my favourite photo so far.

Other peoples ideas

I was thinking today about the development of new ideas. How much of what we actually write is new and how much has been done before?
Furthermore how much of what we do is groundbreaking and how much is a development of ideas already thought of.

These thoughts have been due to a number of this, I've been reading Bill Bysons "A Short History of Nearly Everything" and the majority of the individuals with scientific groundbreaking discoveries were not the initial discovers. Often enough, the discovery had been made many years previously and additional work done on it had brought the discovery to the limelight.
Of course as with everything there are exceptions to this, specifically Einsteins theory of general relativity which "many physicists believe that without Einstein, it could have been another few decades or more before another physicist worked out the concepts and mathematics of general relativity".

The other reasons for these thoughts are the nobel prizes which are being awarded at the moment. What does it take to get a nobel prize and for the person who wins the prize, how many other peoples ideas were used to arrived at that point?

I think in the end we'll find that everything is linked, nothing is original but every new step is original. A bit like in nature where everything evolves from one thing to the other, our ideas evolve, just at a much faster rate.