When I turned 55 years old back in 2009, I did a study to determine what the 80th percentile 55 year old household looked like financially, in general terms. I originally called the EBRI (Employee Benefit Research Institute) in Washington D.C. because I wanted to get a feel for how well prepared my cohort was for retirement. I was referred to an economist at the University of Chicago who heads up the Survey of Consumer Finances for the Federal Reserve Board. Not exactly the beginning of a movie script, but I struck up a very informative relationship with this individual who lived and breathed the financial reality of the American household.
What unfolded was an eye-opening effort to determine what it would take for the Baby Boomers to retire with a lifestyle befitting the upper middle class of one of the most prosperous societies in the history of the human race. After all, who could be so pessimistic as to forecast failure for the people who sit at the center of our most influential demographic age group? But the data on their current financial condition is, to say the least, daunting. And particularly now, at 57, they do not have much time to prepare.
There were three primary reasons why I chose the 80th percentile 55 (now 57) year old household. First, people in the 80th percentile have the where-with-all to change their behavior to adapt to changing financial goals. Second, I am 57 and I was curious about whom I was hanging out with. Finally, the people born in 1954 are practically at the center of the Baby Boom, which is defined as those born between 1946 and 1964.
Old Maps Online
The OldMapsOnline Portal is an easy-to-use gateway to historical maps in libraries around the world.
It allows the user to search for online digital historical maps across numerous different collections via a geographical search. Search by typing a place-name or by clicking in the map window, and narrow by date. The search results provide a direct link to the map image on the website of the host institution.
OldMapsOnline has been created by a collaboration between The Great Britain Historical GIS Project based at The University of Portsmouth, UK and Klokan Technologies GmbH, Switzerland.
MediBid
Affordable Medical Care — Your Health, Your Choice!
Affordable medical care is just around the corner. Shop for affordable medical care across state lines, or just down the street, and find timely medical care as a domestic medical tourist. Travel around the world for your medical procedure and enjoy a medical tourism vacation. Forget surgical waiting lists and get timely medical care! The choice is yours.
On MediBid, cash pay patients can shop for medical care from an interactive doctor directory. Doctors taking new patients such as family physicians, plastic surgeons, various specialists, and even destination hospitals and imaging centers, are on MediBid. Patients post medical requests that include health background, as well as information regarding their condition. Patients can even upload images such as a referral from a family physician or an MRI from a radiologist. Doctors bid on these requests. Each bid is private, allowing the patient to choose a doctor not only on price, but also on their credentials, location, and what is included. MediBid isn’t an auction site; it is a place to find a doctor outside your insurance carrier’s network or as an alternative to insurance altogether.
Yosemite HD
Yosemite HD from Project Yosemite on Vimeo.
4×5 Kodachromes
Apps spy on phone messages
ompanies are using smartphone apps to extract vast quantities of private information about users’ lives, in some cases reading their text messages and intercepting calls.
Among those that admitted reading text messages this weekend was the internet giant Facebook, which said it was accessing the information as part of a trial to launch its own messaging service.
Companies ranging from Facebook and Apple to small operations run by individuals gain access to the treasury of data when people agree to the terms and conditions of downloading an app.
The terms and conditions often go unread, leaving users unaware that they have authorised access to their private information. According to a YouGov poll for The Sunday Times, 70% rarely or never read T&Cs when downloading apps.
Burning Man Video
Every year, somewhere in the middle of the Black Rock Desert in Nevada, a diverse and motley group of people from around the globe gather for the annual counterculture arts festival-cum-social experiment known as Burning Man.
I had heard stories about the festival and bits and pieces from friends and had seen enough images of the event to have some general idea of the aesthetic of the place. It was really that aesthetic rather than any kind of experiential or narrative aspect that was for me, the primary draw. Here was an entire city full of extravagant set pieces, whimsical vehicles, and fully costumed extras, set down in the middle of an almost otherworldly desert landscape that only magnified the surreal characteristics of the entire scene – all just waiting to be filmed.
When a chance arose to attend last year’s “Burn” the prospect was too good to pass up.
Ebooks: The Giant Disruption
In the last twelve months, I’ve never bought fewer printed books — and I’ve never read so many books. I have switched to ebooks. My personal library is with me at all times, in my iPad and my iPhone (and in the cloud), allowing me to switch reading devices as conditions dictate. I also own a Kindle, I use it mostly during Summer, to read in broad daylight: an iPad won’t work on a sunny café terrace.
I don’t care about the device itself, I let the market decide, but I do care about a few key features. Screen quality is essential: in that respect the iPhone’s Retina Display is unbeatable in the LED backlit word, and Kindle e-ink is just perfect with natural light. Because I often devour at least two books in parallel, I don’t want to struggle to land on the page I was reading when I switch devices. They must sync seamlessly, period, even with the imperfect cellular network. (And most of the time, they do.)
I’m an ebook convert. Not by ideology (I love dead-tree books, and I enjoy giving those to friends and family), just pragmatism. Ebooks are great for impulse buying. Let’s say I read a story in a magazine and find the author particularly brilliant, or want to drill further down into the subject thanks to a pointer to nicely rated book, I cut and paste the reference in the Amazon Kindle store or in the Apple’s iBooks store and, one-click™ later, the book is mine. Most of the time, it’s much cheaper than the print version (especially in the case of imported books).
Political Portfolio
White House News Photographers Association:
A portfolio of political pictures comprised solely from the four political categories: Presidential, Insiders Washington, On Capitol Hill and Picture Story/Politics. Portfolio must include one Picture Story/Politics and at least one other political category. The maxium total number of pictures in this portfolio is 20.
Germans Volunteer for Greek Tax Mission
German tax collection experts have volunteered to go to Greece to help combat widespread evasion, in a move that risks reigniting tensions between Berlin and Athens.
Germany’s federal states have recruited about 160 experts to serve under a European Union and International Monetary Fund initiative to improve tax administration in Greece.