japan-style deflation

Was deflation the cause or the symptom of the weak economy?  I suspect it was more a reinforcing symptom but that, even without deflation, the economy would still have been moribund.  Just thinking about QE2 and its purported goal of avoiding deflation (rather than pumping up asset prices, especially housing and equities).

batman themed lego sets

Lego stopped making Batman themed sets a while ago (2006-2008).  It's hard to find good information on why they stopped.  I thought of this because the website for the upcoming (October 2011) LegoLand in Florida has the following:  "Studio Store – Visit this store to pick-up all your favorite LEGO licensed products, like Clutch Powers ... Star Wars™ and Batman™".  If this doesn't just mean the videogame or t-shirts, it could be a sign that there will finally be new Batman sets again.  I know some people who would be very excited about that.

turmoil

Startling that there seem to be three relatively full-fledged civil wars going on in the middle east - all either in or directly adjacent to large oil producers - and yet no sense of impending doom or panic.  Am I missing something?  For example, not to see conspiracies, but that these are somewhat regulated conflicts where the ending is both preordained and better for the west?

megamillions

Probably need billions but, if there were a silver bullet product to work on, it would be the creation of a very small electric or similar powerplant that could be swapped in for the existing engine in a car.

google bet

I made a (modest) bet this week that google does not want to be a search company.  Rather, Page and Brin have very large goals that they are using search to finance.  And, eventually, from all of the different efforts the company makes, it will come up with another disruptive leading product.  That could only have been financed from the outsized profits from search.  The efforts on self-driving cars, space elevators, and machine translation all point towards using the freedom that comes from improbable amounts of money to break rapidly through barriers to next generation technologies.

Intellectual Property and China

Perhaps it is cases like this (Huawei sues ZTE for infringement) that will lead the way to a maturing perspective on IP in China.  Not "us vs. them" but rather an evolution to creating enough value that it is worth protecting.

RIM

I need a new Blackberry.  I use an iPhone as well but, for typing, I still like the blackberry.

I keep up with what's going on with the iPhone (not that hard, 5 models in total over 4 years, I guess) but not Blackberry so I went to blackberry.com.  I think a nice symptom of RIM's problems is that their website took forever to open.  Lots of spinning circles while I waited for something to load.