Finance readings

I have been reading some finance related stuff which is extremely intersting - Presently I am skimming through Malkiel's Random walk down wall street. I also find ashwath damodaran's webpage extremely useful for some stuff for corporate finance and investments.

How about jeremy seigel.com - Wharton Prof's own webpage..

MEMS bite

I was looking at Analog devices for MEMS accelerometers for work. I find these micromachined sensors amazing. Think of all the different scenarios they can used in. The world is soon going to be swarmed by a plethora of swarming mites while we go on taking our world for granted.

So where are M.E.M.S. used at the moment? The most common applications of M.E.M.S. are those that require sensors or tiny pumps. Current common examples of M.E.M.S. include the ink-spraying nozzles on inkjet printers and accelerometer sensors as used in car airbags, where the micromachines are used to initiate them at the correct time. The latter may seem suprising, bearing in mind that the sensors are required to function in an impact scenario where many of the large, strong, mechanical items may well be destroyed, but this is another key aspect of the M.E.M.S. advantages over conventional engineering methods. At the nano-engineering level conventional ideas regarding robustness are replaced with concepts, which, at first reading, may seem somewhat counter-intuitive. The small size of M.E.M.S. mean that they have very little inertia of their own and so are not subject to large forces on impact, and the purity with which they have to be manufactured means that the faults in materials which would cause other, larger, systems to break are non-existant. The cost saving is also huge. For example atypical airbag sensor produced using traditional methods would cost about $500, whereas current M.E.M. accelerometers are in production by their millions at a cost of just $5 each, one hundredth of the cost.

The name game

Its interesting how my blog got its name..i wanted it to be a documentation of my MBA application efforts,,,and at that time i was focussed primarly on the MIT LFM program..so i gave it that name. Of late, i have also started looking at other good MBA programs.. specifically Wharton, Stanford, Tuck and Kellogg. Of course, in the meantime, I also blog about cool stuff i read, my life and other trivialities.

I am still not ready for comitting myself for this school obsession. I am waiting for many things... economy is one of them. The other main reason is I need to reflect and contemplate what i enjoy doing best , rather than first jumping in the fire and learning to dance later (which is what most applicants do!!)

I have noticed that lot of people in B-schools (pre and post MBA) are not content with what they do (this may be a good thing in some cases)....but management consultants want to to be I-bankers, I-bankers want to be in Investment Management, IM guys want to be Private Equity guys, PE guys want to be Venture capitalists...VCs want to entrepreneurs,....and most entrepreneurs dont have MBA. Btw, those who couldnt get into Management consulting end up in General management (in F500 companies)..and Consultants want to be in General Management positions after a couple of years. But once again, many people in General Mgmt (eg GE, Microsoft) have no MBAs,...they are homebred so to speak. So in a way, you may end up doing what you could have done without an MBA. Am i missing something? .. Have I discovered some flaws in the system.

Well, i may not have. As Wharton webpage aptly puts it "Investing 2 years in any MBA program is a risk, but the Wharton MBA will transform your career in ways that extend far beyong ROI".

Time will tell if I dismiss this statement as a big load of hogwash or actually discover the truth. I hope for the sake of my own sanity, that the latter comes true.

Catching up on reading

Here are some books i will be found curled up with in the coming month:

1. Adventures of sherlock holmes

2. Jack: straight from the gut

Books on order:

1. the goal

2. Random walk down wall street

Quakes and shakes

Looks like earthquakes are hitting all over the planet lately. Central calfornia shook with a 6.5 magnitude EQ and so did Bam in Iran. Net result: 3 people died in California and 50,000 in Iran. Total extent of coverage for the Iran quake on CNN: 0 minutes the first few days. Ironic? Well there is more,..the only coverage which I saw of the iRAN quake was 4 days later..when Bush decided to send humanitarian aid to Iran.

I feel strongly that american media is extremely biased when showing world events. First of all, many notable world events are not even covered..and those that are covered are based entirley on region. For e.g., right after sept 11th, there was a blast in Bali. CNN and other american media covered it extensively...but earthquake in Iran...no coverage. More casualties, more damage..but not a peep from CNN.

Is it fair?

I wish i am able to obtain more rational and unbiased coverage of world news here in America. There may be cats missing in Iowa..and another black kid may be roughly accosted by Police, but I want to see world events covered which affect all of us in more ways than one.