There seems to be a connection between animals hunting in the field and combat in the business world; a person who enjoys watching one should be expected to watch the other.
Over Memorial Day weekend the world's most noble and handsome labrador retriever visited me, along with his mommy, who is the best cook in Patagonia AZ. (The fact that I helped to name him, Chaco, has nothing to do with my praise.)
He certainly enjoyed the large field of grass, junipers, and yucca that adjoins my RV park. The very first day he managed to nail a rabbit. My kelpie, Coffee Girl, has been chasing them everyday but has never nailed one. His success as a rabbit-hunter surprised me. Were his legs just long enough to outrun them? He wasn't nearly as explosive in the pursuit as my kelpie. And neither of these larger dogs has the comical ferocity that my little poodle had, in his prime.
Watching animals hunt is interesting; it's not for nothing that animal or nature channels on cable TV emphasize the drama of the hunt, rather than the static prettypoo-ness of nature.
I share this interest with other "nature lovers." It seems completely natural to carry that interest over into the stock market, especially if you don't sentimentalize non-homo-sapiens animal species as "holy", and demonize the business world.
These days there is a lot of discussion on who will rule the computer/internet world, now that the Wintel duopoly seems to be turning into the paradigm of the past. Leading contestants include Apple, Google, Facebook, and Amazon. I don't understand this whole social network phenomenon so I won't comment on Facebook.
The least likely winner is Apple. It's true that they've come out with a remarkable series of blockbuster gadgets the last few years, and that they keep hoping to rope you to the iTunes store for media consumption. But it isn't very long before imitators can produce something 80% as good at half the price. After all, there is very little proprietary technology in Apple products. Also, how many more gadget categories are there?
Google thrives on search and advertising. Lately I've been using Bing as my search engine. A completely unscientific assessment of it is that it is just as good as Google. I've always thought that Google search was over-rated.
The company that interests me the most is Amazon, one of the few survivors of the DotCom bubble of the late 1990s. Let's use a concrete illustration that pertains to summertime: let's say you are shopping for travel or camping books. Amazon has always been strong in the book department; let Apple or Barnes & Noble or Google do what they may.
After reading about, say, whitewater kayaking in Idaho, Google could bury you with ads for nearby lodges and restaurants, and then whisk you over to Google Maps to help you get there, while identifying which gasoline stations are 3 cents cheaper along the route. It could whisk you over to web photo albums of other people who were whitewater kayaking in the area that you seem to be focusing on. These are advantages of Google over Apple.
But Amazon has the advantage in showing you the thousand and one pieces of exotic kayaking equipment that you really need to buy. And if they've already sucked you into their "Prime" program, with its annual fee and free shipping thereafter, it just makes sense to buy through Amazon. I wish I knew how to compare Amazon's sales commission to Google's ad revenue. I suspect that Amazon has the best chances of ruling the internet in the future.
Over Memorial Day weekend the world's most noble and handsome labrador retriever visited me, along with his mommy, who is the best cook in Patagonia AZ. (The fact that I helped to name him, Chaco, has nothing to do with my praise.)
He certainly enjoyed the large field of grass, junipers, and yucca that adjoins my RV park. The very first day he managed to nail a rabbit. My kelpie, Coffee Girl, has been chasing them everyday but has never nailed one. His success as a rabbit-hunter surprised me. Were his legs just long enough to outrun them? He wasn't nearly as explosive in the pursuit as my kelpie. And neither of these larger dogs has the comical ferocity that my little poodle had, in his prime.
Watching animals hunt is interesting; it's not for nothing that animal or nature channels on cable TV emphasize the drama of the hunt, rather than the static prettypoo-ness of nature.
I share this interest with other "nature lovers." It seems completely natural to carry that interest over into the stock market, especially if you don't sentimentalize non-homo-sapiens animal species as "holy", and demonize the business world.
These days there is a lot of discussion on who will rule the computer/internet world, now that the Wintel duopoly seems to be turning into the paradigm of the past. Leading contestants include Apple, Google, Facebook, and Amazon. I don't understand this whole social network phenomenon so I won't comment on Facebook.
The least likely winner is Apple. It's true that they've come out with a remarkable series of blockbuster gadgets the last few years, and that they keep hoping to rope you to the iTunes store for media consumption. But it isn't very long before imitators can produce something 80% as good at half the price. After all, there is very little proprietary technology in Apple products. Also, how many more gadget categories are there?
Google thrives on search and advertising. Lately I've been using Bing as my search engine. A completely unscientific assessment of it is that it is just as good as Google. I've always thought that Google search was over-rated.
The company that interests me the most is Amazon, one of the few survivors of the DotCom bubble of the late 1990s. Let's use a concrete illustration that pertains to summertime: let's say you are shopping for travel or camping books. Amazon has always been strong in the book department; let Apple or Barnes & Noble or Google do what they may.
After reading about, say, whitewater kayaking in Idaho, Google could bury you with ads for nearby lodges and restaurants, and then whisk you over to Google Maps to help you get there, while identifying which gasoline stations are 3 cents cheaper along the route. It could whisk you over to web photo albums of other people who were whitewater kayaking in the area that you seem to be focusing on. These are advantages of Google over Apple.
But Amazon has the advantage in showing you the thousand and one pieces of exotic kayaking equipment that you really need to buy. And if they've already sucked you into their "Prime" program, with its annual fee and free shipping thereafter, it just makes sense to buy through Amazon. I wish I knew how to compare Amazon's sales commission to Google's ad revenue. I suspect that Amazon has the best chances of ruling the internet in the future.
Comments
The least likely winner is Apple. It's true that they've come out with a remarkable series of blockbuster gadgets the last few years, and that they keep hoping to rope you to the iTunes store for media consumption. But it isn't very long before imitators can produce something 80% as good at half the price. After all, there is very little proprietary technology in Apple products. Also, how many more gadget categories are there?