Can Turtles Fly?

Olympics & its Benefits (source: " Is Hosting The Olympics Good For A City? " Original by Information Builders. Downloaded via Visual Loop on Pinterest.)

(source: " Graphic: The richest teams in the world ," by Jonathon Rivait, National Post.  Jul 21, 2012 – 2:06 AM ET | Last Updated: Jul 21, 2012 2:16 AM ET)

USA's Electricity Grid (simulated view) (source: " The art of GPS: Secret corpse flights, pizza boy delivery routes and the daily commute revealed in never-before-seen side of America " by Lee Moran. Mail Online. PUBLISHED: 10:22 GMT, 19 June 2012 | UPDATED: 20:17 GMT, 19 June 2012. Original source: America Revealed)

Large Hedge Funds with Good Long-Term Performance This chart isn't very useful since it doesn't show return in percentage-terms (the bar chart shows dollar gains). Nevertheless, I thought it was worth seeing how large funds are behaving. (source: " The Oracle of Boston ," The Economist. July 7, 2012)

How Educated is the World? Education vs Age in the Modern World Competitiveness of countries, and their standard of living, has historically been driven by education. This relationship may not be as strong in the future—my view is that higher education isn't as big of a distinguishing factor as it was in the past—but very-low education still prevents certain countries from competing on the world market. The chart below from McKinsey Global Institute shows education vs age for key countries. It is obvious that the higher-educated countries are older. It's not clear to me if this is due to lower-educated populations having lower lifespans and/or having more kids. Those scoring low on the education scale are, as expected, poorer as well. (click for larger image) (source: " The world at work: Jobs, pay, and skills for 3.5 billion people ," McKinsey Global Institute. June 2012)

I ran across the following presentation by Jim Chanos and thought you will find it insightful. Even if you aren't into short-selling—I am not—it is useful to see what sort of investments you may want to avoid. Value investors tend to ignore macro views but those who are more influenced by macro may want to pay attention to bearish views of any investments they are considering. Back in May, Chanos gave this brief interview to Bloomberg briefly mentioning the topics covered in the presentation. The presentation covers Chanos' bearish thoughts on what he feels are some characteristics of value traps. He goes on to list several investments that he views as value traps. Here are two summary slides from the presentation. I share most of Jim Chanos' views and think investors should be careful with the areas he identified. For instance, I do think traditional PC manufacturers could lose big—he is bearish on HP—as tablets and mobile computing replaces PCs. Even compan...

The Exponential Growth in Photos Oldest Photo of a Person Boulevard du Temple by Daguerre, Paris, France (circa 1838) (source: Scanned from The Photography Book, Phaidon Press, London, 1997. Downloaded from Wikipedia Commons on June 24, 2012) Growth in Photos (source: " How many photos have ever been taken? " By Jonathan Good, 1000memories blog, September 15, 2011.) Largest Photo Libraries (source: " How many photos have ever been taken? " By Jonathan Good, 1000memories blog, September 15, 2011.)