Lunch In a Box's tip for dividing the contents of a freezer-bag into individual portions is great, right up there with the soup-in-ice-cube-trays hack. This is the perfect compromise between freezing everything in tiny individual bags or having to hack individual frozen hunks off some foodberg at the back of the freezer.

Enter my Japanese-language freezing books. A standard tip for freezing ground foods or thick sauces in small portions is to first put the food into a large freezer bag and press it out as flat as possible, eliminating air pockets. (Making it thin speeds up defrost time due to the increased surface area, and pressing out excess air guards against freezer burn.) Use a long chopstick or ruler to create divisions within the food, forming individual portions. This way when you freeze the entire bag, you’ll be able to quickly break off just as much as you want to use, no more.

Link (via Neatorama)

A few years back, a bunch of publications ran misleading stories claiming that the department store Target was trying to make use of tools like Google Maps/Google Earth that used satellite imagery to advertise on their rooftops. That wasn't the case at all. The image of a Target rooftop in question was near an airport, and there are a number of stores that have painted large advertisements on their rooftops for passengers in landing airplanes to spot. However, the concept has inspired some artistic thinking. Reader Joseph B writes in to tell us about how one artist has now purposely hidden a rather large image of Waldo of "Where's Waldo" fame on an unidentified rooftop in Vancouver. The real trick, though, is figuring out not just where this Waldo is, but when he'll actually show up in Google Earth. Of course, this whole thing has ticked off folks who are upset with the suggestion that it's somehow Google taking all of these satellite photos (no, Google doesn't own a satellite... yet), rather than 3rd parties who license the photos to a bunch of companies. In the meantime, while this is a bit silly, it's kind of cool to see people thinking about different ways to create artwork, display it and interact with it, thanks to new technologies like Google Earth.

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capnkr sends us to Wired for the story of the long-delayed Rocket Racing League, which we discussed when it launched in 2005. It seems the league is finally ready to get off the ground. At a press conference at the Yale Club in New York, RRL CEO Granger Whitelaw said rocket-powered planes will fly their first exhibition race in August at the EAA AirVenture air show in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, with at least three more races to follow in 2008. "The Rocket Racing League on Monday detailed plans to move from a sci-fi fantasy to a full-fledged commercial enterprise — including 'vertical drag races' using rockets."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

There is a game played by CEOs with the corporate issuance of lottery tickets. Otherwise known as stock. Stock can be issued in any number of ways, shapes or forms. Warrants, options, restricted or unrestricted stock. No matter what you call it, every CEO hired, is asking for equity knowing that their only goal is to hit the jackpot and create a pool of wealth that puts them in the "fuck you" wealth category. Thats enough money to buy or rent just about anything you can think of and put you in position to never have to work again. You just live off the cash in the bank.

Put another way, every hired CEO is looking to be in a position to look in the mirror , smile and tell themselves they have made it. They are living the American dream. The only way to do that is to grab as much equity equivalents as you can and do everything you can to get that stock price up as high as you can while periodically liquidating the stock and stuffing the cash in your bank account.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with doing so. Any CEO who doesnt take advantage of this golden ticket opportunity is an idiot. In fact, although I don't have actual numbers, I would hazard a guess that more than 95pct of CEOs hired to run companies with a billion dollar plus public market caps probably do get themselves to the position of having more than 10mm dollars in equity very quickly. While those who manage to hold on to their jobs a while and not screw up too bad, can relatively quickly get past the 25mm dollar in equity mark and reach the 50mm dollar mark with in 10 years. Its actually pretty tough to screw up and not get there if you have any brains at all.

Why ?

Because you have the entire Mutual Fund, Hedge Fun and Brokerage industry doing everything they can to get you there. Think about it.

You can't turn on CNBC or Fox Business without them cheerleading the market to go up. Every man, woman, child, fund, index or interested party who buys the stock is doing everything they can to get the stock of the company to go higher. They don't really care how you run the company and they care less about the results of the company than they do about the performance of the stock. Heck, even if they did care, shareholders dont really own anything and have zero say in the company. If you really dig into it, its the ultimate in social networking. Everyone who owns the stock belongs to the fan page or group for the stock and they are telling everyone they can how wonderful the company is and why the stock will go up, all while praying it does so.

Its the American way and it works ! Hundreds of millions of dollars are spent every year by brokerages telling every American that the stock market over time will go up 7pct per year. All you have to do is diversify and hold onto your stock long enough. For better or worse, everyone believes it.

With all of that social networking power, call it stocksourcing behind stocks, how can CEOs not get rich ?

The problem with all of this is that there is a huge disconnect between the CEO and shareholders doing well and those who work for the company doing well

Yes, its true, particularly in markets like we are experiencing now, stocks can hit 52 week, or even multi-year lows.(although more often than not, in spite of low stock prices, market caps have increased).

Yes, its true that CEOs see the value of their holdings shrink. However, unlike lottery tickets whose value goes to zero when you dont hit the number, the CEO equity positions retain their upside and history has shown us that if they go far enough underwater, they will get repriced and /or reissued. All in the name of keeping the CEO happy. So while CEOs may get "less rich" for awhile, the game is stacked so that a downturn gets them happy real fast when the upturn comes.

The disconnect is that there is a big difference between not making Wall Street happy and not making money.

The pressure from Wall Street is to grow earnings forever. Not matter what it takes. This isnt a problem when a company is doing well. EVeryone is happy. But when the economy hits a bump like it has now, when the market is hitting a bump and stock prices are declining, like it is now, the pressure comes. Everyone owning the stock reacts and whats to know what the CEO will do to get the price back up. This, as they say "is where the CEO earns their pay" Unfortunately, what this really means is that everyone who works for that company is at risk. At risk of losing their jobs, benefits, raises, you name it. Its at risk.

All of which is a long winded way of saying that employees live in the corporate cash zone, CEOs and the top few in management live in the equity/lottery ticket zone.

Those in the cash zone always take the first hit. People,places and things that consume cash are the first things to go because cash expenses immediately reduce earnings. If you or anyone like you consumes cash, unless someone upstairs thinks you generate a straight to the bottom line return on the cash expenditure, you are about to become a corporate ghost. Your person, place and thing will be memorialized as a cut to increase earnings mentioned in a press release that wall street will cheer and use to push up the stock price.

What makes me sad about all of this is that I really think that in this country if there truly was a connection between shareholders and management, that if given a choice by profitable companies, most of us would choose to hold on to our shares and accept an expanded PE for some period of time in exchange for people keeping their jobs.

I would love to receive an email from a company I own saying something to the effect of:

Dear Shareholder,
We are facing a very difficult decision that we would like your feedback on . Our earnings per share last quarter were 20 cents, and for the entire last year, 80 cents. Because of a downturn in business caused by XYZ factors, we face the choice of making 10 pct less, or cutting headcount and related expenses in order to maintain our earnings and possibly even grow our earnings a couple cents this year.

As a shareholder, we would like to ask you whether you would consider allowing us to retain these valued employees. We recognize that it would require you accepting a PE multiple 10 pct higher than the current market. We hope you would be willing to make this concession. We think that the jobs this will save will return far greater value to shareholders over the long run.

We look forward to your vote.

Personally, Im willing to give a higher multiple in exchange for saving people's jobs. At least once.

Unfortunately, this of course is a fantasy that can't happen in this country.

Which brings us back to CEO Pay.

As long as CEOs live in the equity/lottery ticket zone and employees in the cash zone, CEO pay is going to be outrageous relative to everyone else.

The only possible way to change this is to put CEOs in the cash zone. Make companies generate 100pct of their compensation in cash that is 100pct expensable in the quarter paid. Thats not to say they cant own stock. Hell yes they can own stock. But make them buy it either on the open market, or as part of the programs that make stock available to every company employee, on the same terms. They are getting paid enough in cash and if they believe in their ability to run the company, they can put their money where their mouth is. Eliminate all the free lottery tickets. Make them buy stock, options, warrants, whatever, on the same terms as everyone else can.


Shareholders tend to ignore how much stock is given to management, they don't ignore cash. Companies will always be a lot more stringent with their cash, whether its paid to the CEO or anyone else. CEO cash compensation will go way up, but total compensation will come way down. More importantly , CEOs getting paid huge sums in cash will stand out like a sore thumb when things arent going so well. They will be treated like everyone else in the cash zone and held far more accountable for their work.

Of course this is all just my opinion, but to me its a good thing for all involved. The rich can still get richer, but everyone shares in the risk.

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alphadogg writes "Starting in May, many will have the opportunity to see computing done the old-fashioned way: with lots of gears, a big crank, and some muscle. The Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA, will unveil a new construction, the first in the US, of the 19th-century British mathematician Charles Babbage's Difference Engine No. 2, an improved version of his earlier design for a mechanical digital calculator. It weighs in at two tons more than the Difference Engine built in 1991 at London's Science Museum. Microsoft millionaire Nathan Myhrvold commissioned and paid for the US model."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

While everyone's arguing over the legality of warrantless wiretaps, it looks like the administration and the Department of Homeland Security have moved on to even bigger fish: using spy satellites to spy more thoroughly throughout the US. For rather obvious reasons, this has many folks concerned. The government has shown a decided lack of ability to "stick to the rules" when it comes on domestic spying programs, and given what some of these spy satellites can do, it has people concerned about why the US is using such military hardware, normally reserved to spy on enemy countries, to spy on our own citizens. Somehow, DHS boss Michael Chertoff's response to his critics isn't particularly reassuring:

"There is no basis to suggest that this process is in any way insufficient to protect the privacy and civil liberties of Americans... I think we've fully addressed anybody's concerns. I think the way is now clear to stand it up and go warm on it."

To translate: "You should trust us, because we're trustworthy people who would never do anything wrong (please ignore all we've done wrong over the past few years). So, now that that's settled, let's get this baby rolling..."

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rob conger
ryan bown
jen stark
michael a. salter
jennifer vanderpool
tracey snelling
jennifer dalton
cosimo cavallaro
kent rogowski
yosoh
derek stroup
mike libby
theo jansen

previously on web zen:
group show 2005
group show 2004
group show 2003

Link, Web Zen Home and Archives, Store (Thanks Frank!)

Image: "Tim Berners-Lee, The World Wide Web (The Internet) 2008," a portrait of the web pioneer in woven acrylic yarn on quarter-inch mesh, by artist Rob Conger. This work is available for sale on the internet, appropriately enough, for $2,000.

Tempers flared at the WiMAX show in Singapore last week when the WiMAX Forum apparently moved to suppress a report issued by one of their media sponsors, Telecoms Korea. The Telecoms Korea report, prepared with the expectation of distribution at the event, apparently included a case study regarding KT's deployment of WiBRO in South Korea, including relevant facts about the rocky start the service has had. Well, apparently "rocky start" isn't on the agenda at the WiMAX Congress, since the Forum blocked distribution of the report. Telecoms Korea is accusing KT of being behind the cover-up, and it is specifically singling out Ron Resnick, the Intel executive who currently sits as President and Chairman of the WiMAX Forum as being the ax-man. The publication is furious at the alleged censorship, and says it degraded to a shouting match at the Congress with Resnick saying, "Get out of here, now!" several times. That's too bad, because as an occasional subscriber to Telecoms Korea, I have seen that their editorial position on WiBRO has been one part national pride mixed with one part realism. If they have had any bias, it has been a hope to see WiBRO succeed. The publication argues that by turning a blind eye to the simple realities of KT's difficult launch, the WiMAX community is setting itself up for repeat disappointment rather than being able to learn from it.

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esocid writes "A team of European scientists has deliberately triggered electrical activity in thunderclouds for the first time by aiming high-power pulses of laser light into a thunderstorm. At the top of South Baldy Peak in New Mexico during two passing thunderstorms, the researchers used laser pulses to create plasma filaments that could conduct electricity. No air-to-ground lightning was triggered because the filaments were too short-lived, but the laser pulses generated discharges in the thunderclouds themselves up to several meters long. Triggering lightning strikes is an important tool for basic and applied research because it enables researchers to study the mechanisms underlying lightning strikes. Moreover, triggered lightning strikes will allow engineers to evaluate and test the lightning-sensitivity of airplanes and critical infrastructure such as power lines. Research into laser-triggered lightning has been going on for some years. Until now, no experiment was able to produce a long enough plasma channel to affect the electrical activity inside clouds."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

jamie found a post laying to rest one potential criticism of Google's App Engine, that of the danger of lock-in to the platform. Waxy.org points out a hack called AppDrop, written by Chris Anderson, that provides a container for Google App SDK applications, running entirely on Amazon's EC2 infrastructure. Here's Anderson's AppDrop page and his blog post announcing it.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Satellite provider OnSat recently shut off internet service to the Navajo nation, leaving the entire reservation without access vital to education, government, and other services. OnSat claims it did so because the federal government failed to pay about $2 million it owed, which OnSat in turn pays to a subcontractor for satellite time. Snip:

The Universal Service Administration Co., which administers the E-rate program, is withholding the funding because of a tribal audit that showed OnSat may have double-billed the tribe. The audit also raised questions about how the tribe requested bids for the Internet contract.

Tribal officials say it could be a couple of weeks before service is restored to chapter houses across the 27,000 square-mile reservation. They've been meeting with other Internet service providers to explore their options. Utah-based OnSat, meanwhile, has offered to reconnect the affected chapter houses, if they pay out of their own pockets.

Link to Forbes story. Related items: AP, Gallup Independent, Valleywag.

Image: "Navajo Girl," by Wolfgang Staudt

Wanna build something cool and useful and maybe win an Apple gift certificate worth up to $3000? Build a mashup application or mashup your existing application using both the Highrise API and the Lypp API and you could win. More details on the Lypp blog. We’re real excited to see what you come up with. Get coding!

Last week, there was plenty of news about a group of eight Florida teenagers who purposely lured another teen into someone's home and then beat her while filming the attack -- which they specifically planned to put on YouTube in an attempt to "get famous." While there have been some attempts to point a finger of blame at YouTube and MySpace, it looks like the press isn't jumping on that bandwagon as quickly as you might expect. Rose M. Welch writes in to point to an Associated Press article that quotes a bunch of people pointing out that YouTube is not to blame and has nothing to do with this attack. Some point out that those sites gave us a record of the attack to make it easier to capture and prosecute those responsible -- while others point out that "the public" is equally as responsible for wanting to watch that kind of attack in the first place. Either way, it's nice to see the AP quickly come out with a clear defense of why YouTube isn't the problem here.

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Graftweed writes to share that Sun is working on a new open video codec called Open Media Stack (OMS). OMS video will be based on H.26x technology and promises to deliver royalty-free open video. This certainly isn't the first attempt at an open codec, hopefully Sun will decide to add something to the table beyond just their name.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Jay Rosen reports that the Obama quotes that are driving the political talk today came from Mayhill Fowler, a reporter writing for OffTheBus, an organization he founded with Arianna Huffington. Jay's piece is a must-read if you want to understand how the people are reshaping political discourse in 2008.

Update: The NY Times, unlike other MSM outlets, gives proper credit to Fowler.

Hillary Clinton says that the last two Democratic candidates lost because Republican charges that they were elite stuck. My response: This time is different. Gore had the baggage of the Clinton presidency to overcome, and even so the race was so close that many people felt he actually won and his election was unfairly overturned by the Supreme Court. I voted for Kerry, but with far less enthusiasm than I will vote for Obama, a candidate I believe in. I believe Obama made a mistake, but there's no choice as far as I'm concerned, between him and the other two candidates. HRC is every bit as elite and far more out of touch, and too cyncial to be my President. McCain is a slightly better George Bush, we need a sharp turn away from Bush, and only Obama offers that.

Obama keeps missing a big opportunity to spin higher. Last night on CNN's Compassion Forum, a question came up asking whether he would take a pledge to fight poverty. He almost said what I keep hoping he'll say -- he'll accept the challenge but only if the electorate agrees to stay involved after the election. I think we're desperate to make a difference, and we want to do more than vote. A Presidential candidate who gives us a mission, work we can do to make the US stronger and the world better will be far more than a President, he or she would be a leader. At times Obama comes close, when he says we'll help young people pay for college if they agree to provide service. How about a service program that involves everyone. I think it would be a far more popular idea than it might seem at first.

On the other hand, it seems at this time that Obama is going to have to attack HRC really hard, to knock her out. I think that's what the press wants, and I think that's what this ominous poll from Pennsylvania is saying. To close the deal, Obama is going to have to kill the Clintons, politically. It's not enough to hope that they'll just go away. He has to do it to them. I don't like this because it hurts the possibility of him having a positive Presidency, but I think it's what it's come to now. I'm sure some of my friends who support Obama will disagree.

It's time for the Obama campaign to engage with the press. A detailed campaign to explain, publicly, why Obama is much more competitive against John McCain in the general election. Why aren't they responding to the Clinton claims that he can't beat McCain. Respond to the kitchen sink campaign on every detail. You may not respect HRC, but you have to act as if you do.