VC. In Chicago??

Cody, Wyoming

Having a great time on the trip. Not much else to write about as I havent had a chance to read any of my regular stuff. I feel really disconnected and hate to see my email and RSS list really pile up. But its not a big deal. Much better to make the best out of the trip right now and worry about that later.

We are now in Cody, Wyoming. Went to a rodeo a couple of hours ago, will head into Yellowstone tomorrow morning. The Black Hills in South Dakota were really great. Beautiful area of the country, lots of things to see and very interesting. We managed to see the Jewel Cave, the Wind Cave, Crazy Horse monument, Deadwood, Custer National Park, Hill City, etc etc. Pretty much covered it all.

Trip and Internet connectivity

We are 3 days into our trip and its been great. After staying overnight in Madison, WI, we drove all the way to Wall, South Dakota (where yes, we also visited Wall Drug). From there we spent a full day driving and hiking in the Badlands National Park. It is really amazing. Truly worth visiting.

Today we left Wall and drove to the Black Hills. We went to Mt. Rushmore, the Crazy Horse monument and drove briefly through part of Custer State Park, where the views from the Needles Highway are amazing.

Anyway, what this post is about is the following: I have been really impressed with all the hotels offering high speed Internet connections, usually free. Before leaving I printed out a bunch of Earthlink access numbers and was not expecting to find high speed access anywhere. So far, every hotel we've stayed in has had it. And we're not staying in fancy places. Even the Best Western in Wall, South Dakota! This has truly been a pleasant surprise.

GSB Bloggers

Jeremy posted a comment yesterday and a link on his blog to mine (my traffic is up already!). Thanks Jeremy. He will be starting at the GSB in the fall. I wish him the best. I had a really great two years there.

I see that there is another class of '06 GSBer who is blogging.

And finally, I shouldnt forget to mention Zimran Ahmed. He was class of '03 and was one of the High Tech Group co-chairs (I was a co-chair the following year). Zimran and Jeremy Woodlee did a really great job in organizing the inaugural Techvision conference. His blog is excellent and was mentioned in Forbes.com as one of the best economics blogs on the web a couple of years ago.

Millenium Park

We're sitting on the lawn at the new pavilion in Chicago's Millenium Park. The opening concert is going on right now. The pavilion is very impressive, as is the new “Bean” sculpture. Yeah, so the park was 4 years late and way over budget. Right now it looks great and people are enjoying it. Its a very nice addition to an already great city.

Sent wirelessly via BlackBerry.

Moving

I havent posted for over a week now. I really want to keep this blog going, so Im going to try to not let that happen again. The last two weeks have been really busy though. We've been trying to do a lot of things in Chicago that we wanted to do before we left, Ive been finishing up a few web page projects that I had with my brother and we've been getting ready for our trip on our way to Seattle.

But now the movers are coming tomorrow, and supposedly packing and loading by the evening. I dont really know if they will be able to do it in one day, but they say they will. We'll see. In any case, we will have nothing left here on Thursday, so that is the day we will take off.

We plan on driving from here to South Dakota, where we will visit the Badlands and Mt. Rushmore. Then go across Wyoming to Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Park. We will then go south to Utah where we want to see Bryce, Zion and maybe Arches National Park. The we head to the Grand Canyon, Las Vegas and then into California where we plan on stopping at Sequoia, Yosemite and San Francisco. Finally we will drive up the coast to Seattle. The plan is to do this in about 5 weeks. I will try to post as much as possible from the road.

Its sad to leave Chicago. Ive been here now for almost 11 years, since I came to college in 1993. In fact, Chicago is more like home now than Mexico City.

The Radioactive Boy Scout

Just finished reading The Radioactive Boy Scout by Ken Silverstein. Its a quick read and a very interesting story. Two things struck me:

1) The relative ease with which someone can get a hold of radioactive materials. Weve heard this numerous times elsewhere, but this book really brings it home. Its a little scary since the kid in the story only spent about $8000. A well funded operation could get its hands on much more.

2) This kid's (David Hahn) talent was very impressive. And he pursued his goals with incredible persistence. Its very unfortunate his family and teachers were not able to recognize this and steer him in a more positive way. He probably could have gotten a free ride to the college of his choosing and on to great things from there. Hopefully he still managed to do that later on.

It makes me think of the incredible talent that people around the world must have that unfortunately goes unnoticed. Most of the world lives in poverty and most kids growing up will not have the resources necessary to develop those talents. Who knows how many Einsteins/Michael Jordans have spent their lives just working to make enough money to eat. Which makes David Hahn's story more impressive - he overcame his situation and did whatever was necessary to pursue his dream. Then again, he was in the US where these things are much easier to do than elsewhere.

Table Tennis

In contrast to my previous post, this is a sport I love. If played well, its incredibly fun (I may enjoy it more than squash even). About a week and a half ago I took a lesson from Lupi (Ilija Lupulesku) who is part of the Killerspin team here in Chicago. He is going to play for the US in the Athens Olympics this year and he won a silver medal for Yugoslavia in 1988. The hour we spent hitting the ball was amazing. The paddle he lent me made a huge difference (compared to the crap old one I usually play with) in my game from the beginning and with his tips I was hitting some really good shots (for me) after a little while. It was a blast.

I'm hoping to keep on playing regularly in Seattle. I just did a few searches and found that Fan Yi Yong, a great player from China is based there...

Golf

After meaning to play golf for several years I finally did it a few weeks ago. I took a lesson, have been to the driving range twice and played twice with some friends (9 holes the first time, 16 the second). I havent been as bad as I thought I would be.

But I cant decide if I actually like the game yet. The main problem I have is that it takes too much time. In the time it takes to play 18 holes I could play a long squash match (getting a much better workout) and do a number of other, more productive things. We'll see. I'll try to keep on playing somewhat regularly over the next few months.

Behavioral economics and neuroscience

This Newsweek article is very interesting. Talks about how scientists are getting more insights into how and why people make economic choices by looking at what happens physically in the brain. Different parts of the brain are activated under different circumstances, and this can show (among other things) if a person is making a completely logical decision or is being led more by emotions.

In my Managerial Decision Making class a couple of quarters ago we talked a lot about behavioral economics/finance issues. I took the class with Chris Hsee (and it was excellent) but Richard Thaler also teaches it at the Chicago GSB. One of my favorite topics was the Ultimatum Game (also mentioned in the Newsweek article). Most people would reject an offer deemed unfair when they know the person (or can at least see them) or there will be subsequent rounds. I agree with the rejection when there are subsequent rounds, but really cannot understand rejection just because you know there is a person there. To me, inflicting "punishment" just because you know the person doesnt make much sense. As it turns out, most people would also reject the offer when the game is played blindly (you have no idea who is on the other side) and with no subsequent rounds. To me this makes no sense at all. I just think its obvious that you will get offered only $1 and you should take it. But apparently that is not the case with everyone. I would be very interested in seeing if the part of my brain related to emotion reacts less than other peoples'.

So, getting back to the article, this technology can be used to understand why people make certain decisions. But perhaps more interestingly, it could also be used to learn how to make people take certain decisions (e.g. how can a marketing campaign be structured to trigger the "right" areas of the brain, leading to more purchases). This reminded me of a part in The Corporation where a company admits to marketing to children because they knew that the kids would want the product and nag their parents about it. Studies they had done showed that the more a kid nagged his parents, the higher the chance that the parents would buy the product. In the movie this was portrayed as a somewhat insidious practice. What about marketing based on knowledge of the brain and what it reacts to? This would be even more "invasive". So this is interesting to think about. Where is the line? Should businesses use any tool at their disposal to sell more products?

Would businesses be justified in doing this because they really are increasing a person's utility? Or are they clearly manipulating someone and tricking them into buying something they dont need?