The Big Picture

2014 Porsche 911 Turbo
Every Genre of Music. Graphed and Sampled
128 Years of Dow Components
Delightful Customer Service: Maui Jim
10 Weekend Reads
The Best Places to Fly This Summer
Charlie Munger: HFT Is Evil

2014 Porsche 911 Turbo

Posted: 05 May 2013 02:00 AM PDT

Click to enlarge

Some details on the 2014 car:

- 991 Turbo won’t have a manual option (hence its off my wish list);
-Rear-mounted, turbocharged, 3.8-liter flat-six engine, making use of twin, variable-turbine-geometry turbos makes 520 hp
-Kick that up to 560 horsepower in the S version;
-New all-wheel drive system with electronically controlled and activated multi-plate clutch and a water cooling function.
-Acceleration to 60 mph is 3.2 seconds (S is one tenth second faster).
-Top speed is 196 mph;
-Features active aerodynamics thanks to the retractable three-stage front spoiler and a deployable rear wing which also has three settings depending on the conditions;
-Two-tone 20-inch wheels,
-”Up to 16 percent” more fuel efficient than before.

More photos & videos after the jump

Source: Jalopnik

Every Genre of Music. Graphed and Sampled

Posted: 04 May 2013 03:00 PM PDT

Crazy cool interactive graph of all musical genres, including samples for every example. Looks like it required a Herculean amount of labor.

(note it worked better on IE/Safari than Firefox)

click for interactive site

Source: Furia via boingboing

128 Years of Dow Components

Posted: 04 May 2013 11:00 AM PDT

Want to know what has been in the Dow Jones Industrials over the past century and change? Click thru for an interactive chart that shows the full history of the Grandpappy all of indexes.

128 years of the Dow — what’s in and what’s out

click for interactive chart

Source: CNNMoney

Hat tip Tal Yellin

Delightful Customer Service: Maui Jim

Posted: 04 May 2013 08:30 AM PDT

I waste a lot of time energy kvetching about bad bankers, dumb companies, rude people, foolish airlines, and most especially — terrible customer service.

For a change, let me praise a company who does something right: Maui Jim.

I have had several opportunities to test their customer service, and they have gone over and above the call of duty. I have been delighted with their service.

The first experience I had with them was when our Labradoodle puppy somehow got a hold of my Titanium frame Ka’anapali Sunglasses — he chewed up the lenses (but did not break them). The glasses were unusable. Maui Jim allows repairs at a fraction of the replacement cost, so I sent them in with a check. When they returned, replacement lens installed, good as new, included in the package was a note — and a Milkbone dog treat — along with the winking suggestion that the Milkbone might prevent future eyewear mishaps. Smart.

That was over 4 years ago. Somehow, I keep find myself buying more Maui Jim products.

Just last week, I put down my current favorite sunglasses — a pair of blue Honolua Bay shades — on my night table oin order to close an open bedroom window. The wind was picking up, billowing the sheer curtains. After I finished cranking the window closed, I turned to walk out of the room and — CRRUNNNCCHH — the curtains must have knocked the glasses to the carpet, and unknowingly, I stepped full on them, shattering both lenses into many pieces.

I had only mailed them back to the repair department a week ago today (Saturday), so you can imagine my surprise getting this email yesterday:

GREAT NEWS!

Your repair is complete and has been shipped. Your package should arrive in 7 business days or less.

Thank You!

Customer Care Department

Now that’s how you do customer service!

If only more companies who interact with the public and consumers handled their customers that way.

From a a business perspective, what they are doing worked on me — I am a customer for life.

10 Weekend Reads

Posted: 04 May 2013 04:00 AM PDT

Good Saturday morning! Here are some of the longer-form journalism that I have saved for your weekend reading pleasure.

• The dangerous combination of HFT+Twitter: Speed Kills (New Yorker)
• The Big Short War (Vanity Fair)
• Nate Silver: What Big Data can’t predict (Fortune) see also The Rise of Big Data How It’s Changing the Way We Think About the World (Foreign Affairs)
• Meet The Guy Who Helped Google Beat Apple’s Siri (Forbes)
• The Real Me: The internet’s unforgiving archive of our flaws (The Morning News)
• The Criminal Mind: The field of neurocriminology is revolutionizing our understanding of what drives “bad” behavior (WSJ)
• Top Secret: A hidden world, growing beyond control (Washington Post)
• Seeing Stars: The big science of building a giant telescope (Harvard Magazine)
• Octopus: The Footed Void (The New York Review of Books)
• The Uncensored Oral History of ‘The Hangover’ (Hollywood Reporter)