Not A Mystery

I’m coining a new phrase, and remember YHIHF.

ODD Is The New ADD

It’s the digital equivalent of Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), and I’m calling it Our Digital Daze or ODD for short. The “O” for Our in ODD is meant to signal that this is a societal condition. ODD has a kind  negative connotation because it is (largely) out of our control.

To balance ODD I’m going to create another term, which I’ll call Our Digital Lives or ODL. The “L” for Lives says that there is also a positive side to the digital world, and that’s captured in ODL. ODL has a kind of positive connotation because it is (largely) within our control

Ying / Yang, whatever.

Because ODD / ODL is so rich in possibility, there will be a number of acronyms that go along with it:

• MDD /MDL  and “M” signifies My as in My Digital Daze.
• GDD / GDL  and “G” signifies Get, as in Get A Digital Life.
• YDD / YDL and “Y” signifies Your, as in Your Digital Daze.

You get the idea, feel free to make up your own and add to the list.

My plan is an occasional series of posts examining facets of ODD.

I know this wasn’t a particularily entertaining post, but you have to start somewhere. It’s like President Obama’s talk about Health Care Reform.

Stay tuned, digitally that is.

Is it possible that The Economist is moving towards replacing its Big Mac Index with a Big White Index?

Is The Big Burger Index About To Go White?

The Economist has been publishing their (not so tongue-in-cheek) Big Mac Index since 1986. It’s a reality check on world-wide currency exchange rates, based on the concept of Purchasing-Power Parity.

Purchasing-Power Parity (PPP) says that exchange rates are correct when the price of similar goods are the same in each country. The Big Mac survey compares the price of a Big Mac all over the world. The Big Mac is, after all, a basket of standard ingredients put together in a consistent process.

Ubiquity.

Anyway, the latest 2009 survey says that should the Big Mac price in a country translated into dollars be above $3.54, its cost in America, the currency is overvalued; if it is below that benchmark, it is undervalued.

But Never Calorie Challenged

Before you get on that plane to South Africa for your bargin bun, let’s flash forward to the latest Potential PPP candidate. (Wow, that would be PPPP or 4P’s. A candidate for our acronym Hall of Fame.)

The following chart shows the worldwide retail price of Cocaine, as published in The Economist. Again a commodity with worldwide distribution, also some service component, plus transportation and energy costs included.

At Least We Know It's Not A "Push Poll" Around Dinner Time

Is it possible that those mavens at The Economist are preparing us for an update to the Big Mac Index?

We report, you decide.

This week was the American Academy of Sleep Medicine’s annual meeting in Seattle, appropriately named “SLEEP 2009″.

This Guy Is Becoming Famous

In the midst of some fascinating studies into how we spend a huge part of our time on this earth (sleeping), were some amusing (to me) acronyms.

So for example, the following 3 were my favorites:

• TIB – “Time In Bed”
• EDS – “Excessive Daytime Sleepiness”
• PLM – “Periodic Limb Movements”

Is it just me, or do you find these to be a little ditsy for a scientific conference? But it got me to thinking.

Why not make up an acronym of my very own!

Read more…