Sunday Brunch - February 5, 2012

It's been a long weekend of travel to Andrew & Jill's wedding in Kansas City, but I wanted to get a few links up for you.

• Will Energy Consumption Stay Private - Thought provoking article on energy use and transparency on energy usage by Seth Godin. Everything else is becoming public, and I think this will too. That's a good thing.
• In Search of the Elusive Pitching Prospect - Major League Baseball pitchers are like startups. It's almost impossible to project their success, until they start succeeding.
• People Who Use Pinterest - this really funny. In case you don't know, Pinterest is one of the hottest web services in the world and it skews dramatically female.
• Red State Socialism - it turns out that most of the states that skew Republican, get more in Federal benefits than they put in via taxes. That would be fine if they weren't so worried about Socialism. :)
• Does My Butt Look Fat in This? - great investing article on Lululemon and the perils of betting against the fashion tastes of women.
• How Carbs Make You Fat - great infographic.
• Novita Knows - my good friend Lauren is now blogging. She has great fashion sense and is worth the read.
• Watching Apple Win the World - interesting perspective from a group that supported Apple in the early 2000's because they made the best computers. They still make the best computers but it's weird for this group to now be in the majority. Kind of like your favorite Indie Band making it big. Then what do you do?
• How Netflix is Helping Hollywood Ruin DVD's - so true, and smart by Netflix. They have 20M digital subscribers. Hollywood can't ignore a customer base that big.
• Morton Kamien's Obituary - I was saddened this week when a Kellogg classmate passed on the obituary of Professor Mort Kamien. He lived an incredible life including escaping Hitler's troops by running through underground tunnels at the age of 4 in his native Poland. He grew up in NYC and made his way to Chicago to help start Kellogg's Decision Sciences & Macro Econ programs. That's where I met him when I took his Macro Econ class. I believe it was the last class he ever taught, retiring in 2007. We weren't especially close, but I loved going to his class. He liked handling off the cuff questions from students and I gladly fired away. I remember one day he was complaining about something and saying he should already be retired. So I raised my hand and asked why he hadn't retired yet. We both knew the answer and he smiled at me. Professor Kamien loved teaching and I'm proud to have had him as a teacher.