“Levitt and Dubner’s SuperFreakonomics: Rather than a Sequel to the Original and Uncanny Economic Stories We Presented in Freakonomics, We’ve Created a Dry Scientific Journal of What Other Economists are Doing and How They’re Passing It Off as Pop Psychology. Also, We’ve Included a Bonus Guide on How to Start Your Own Business as a High Paid Escort Including Suggested Services and Hourly Rates.”

The full title is very long, but funny in a “pick it up off the shelf and show your friend to get a laugh” marketable way. SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner.

Levitt, the economist and presumably “the source” for the material again pairs up with Dubner, the storyteller, to rekindle the magic they made together four years before with Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything. I loved Freakonomics. It was, in so many ways, the right book at the right time. Like lightning striking, many factors came together to create the perfect conditions for a dramatic effect. Freakonomics published on the heels of Gladwell’s counter-intuitive bestseller, Blink, into a general resurgence of interest in pop psychology and pseudo-educational non-fiction.

Levitt and Dubner grabbed some literary headlines with their sensational, statistically-based assertions, including the deliberate counter-argument to Gladwell’s explanation of decreased crime covered in The Tipping Point. They had a lot of fun, fresh and surprising discoveries that were shared in a punchy and “radio-friendly” way that is a tribute to Dubner’s writing ability—he was able to convert Umberto Eco into Dan Brown. The masses could enjoy Freakonomics.

But like the old adage about lightning striking, Superfreakonomics is a miss.

UNLESS you are looking for financial data to support your transition from your current career into the thriving industry of High-Paid Escort Service Providers. In which case, the first 55 pages are a “must read.” In these pages, a world-renowned economist will explain to you that prostitution is not about buying sex, but really about limited suppliers seeking to satisfy a decreasing demand for a price inelastic service. It is virtually a cut-and-paste business proposal for you to take your Brothel plan to the investors for your A round.

If you have the time and interest to learn more about effectively selling yourself on the street at an hourly rate, this book is for you. If this does not currently align with your career goals, borrow it and read chapter 5 about global cooling, as this will be the water-cooler topic sometime in the near future where you can impress your friends.

My rating for the book is 20,000 otherwise stable housewives turned drug addicted prostitutes because of inalterable economic incentives out of a possible 50,000 otherwise stable housewives turned drug addicted prostitutes because of inalterable economic incentives.

Also, in my extensive research for this blog (i.e.- “reading wikipedia“), I learned they are making a film adaptation of the first book. This will be bad. I look forward to writing another Inexpert Review in the future, apparently sometime around August 2010.

With Web 2.0, where every individual can be both producer and consumer, it seems that the talent should rise to the top. In it’s purest form, what self-regulated social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are creating is a talent-based meritocracy where your peers are your harshest critics.  The good are lauded, the bad ostracized and the inauthentic are ousted before the masses. It is truly dog-eat-dog.

I set before you the rawest example of peer moderation in a laissez faire environment where every man (or woman!) considers himself Simon Cowell:  the YouTube collection of results for “Female Guitarist Acoustic Covers.” I’m pretty sure this is where Simon got the idea in the first place.

If Kelly Clarkson were “starting out” today (and she could play guitar this well!) she would probably be one of the girls below. Check out each video, read the comments beneath, rate your favorites and let the virtual cat fight begin!

The YouTube Results for Top Female Acoustic Guitar Covers.

1) Ash Soular soularashs

2) Kelly Rosenthal KellyIsMusical

3) Lilian Bui lilianbui

4) Elizabeth Laural elizlaural

5) Leesha Harvey LeeshaHarvey

Please vote for your favorite. And feel free to let loose and tell these girls what you think of their skills. After all, it’s Web 2.0. Doesn’t that mean we’re all experts?

Have you heard of the Sports Legends Challenge? Well, you will. This event is a fun new first of its kind that I was lucky enough to become part of about 9 months ago. The people that came up with this idea were simply looking for a way to make really good poker for television. You see, they’d been watching TV and decided televised poker was pretty boring. And they’re not alone. (image from wickedchopspoker.com)
So, they crossed the exciting ideas of professional-level poker, celebrity pro-ams, and reality TV to create the Sports Legends Challenge, the ultimate sports fantasy and casino event. Nothing like it has ever been done. Past events that were billed as sports fantasy usually consisted of average people trying to go up against professional athletes in their own sport, such as shooting free throws against Rick Barry, playing golf against Fuzzy Zoeller, or driving a race car to beat Richard Petty. These fantasy events pitting amateurs against professionals inevitably end in defeat, and in many cases embarrassment or injury.
The Sports Legends Challenge is not asking you to try to beat Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in the activity that he still holds the world record for. Instead, this innovative sports fantasy event is allowing you the chance to compete with AND against legends like Troy Aikman, Mark Messier, and Reggie Jackson in a completely different field where an average guy has a good shot of beating them—at the poker table.

What is the Biggest Reason why Someone would want to do This?
Just forget that the platform for the Sports Legends Challenge is 3 golf tournaments, 28 blackjack and slots tournaments, and 5 stand-alone No Limit Texas Hold ‘Em tournaments, each paying out thousands of dollars to the winners with a total prize pool of up to $10,000,000. Forget about the fact that participants will enjoy four days of lavish living, sumptuous eating, back-to-back parties and world-class entertainment. Ignore the fact that this is a nationally televised event that will give more than 2 dozen regular people the chance to become TV stars. The biggest reason that someone should take part in the Sports Legends Challenge is the unprecedented opportunity to spend four days surrounded by the most impressive names in sports, in poker, and in Hollywood in one of the most beautiful and illustrious resorts in this hemisphere, the Atlantis Paradise Island, Bahamas.

What Kind of Person Would Want to do This?
The Sports Legends Challenge is not for everyone. It was never meant to be. The perfect person for this event is the sports fan who understands the potential once-in-a-lifetime experience that comes from meeting one of their heroes. True fans of the game recognize the value in waiting 4 hours in a Cleveland convention center to shake hands with Jim Brown. A true sports fan will pull down his photo signed by Richard Petty to tell his grandchildren about meeting the King of NASCAR. The perfect person for the Sports Legends Challenge is the person who remembers the very first time he or she met Joe Namath, Sugar Ray Leonard, or Ozzie Smith and realized that these incredible sports figures were at the same time larger-than-life legends while being down-to-earth people who love the game as much as we do. The perfect target market for this event are the fantasy sports fans who will pinch themselves while not one or two, but 25 of the greatest Sports Legends spend not seconds or minutes, but days with them interacting as both a competitor and a teammate in the ultimate sports fantasy and casino event.

Why Now?
The current economic situation causes people to rethink what parts of their life have the greatest value. People today have learned that they need to actively pursue their dreams, that life is short, and that it is made up less-and-less by the things you own, but more-and-more by the experiences you’ve had and the people you’ve known. The SLC is part of an idea that is very much becoming a mainstream concept—the idea of living out one’s dreams. As Americans shuffle their ideals and begin to invest their money and time into things that are of greater worth, the types of real, life-changing experiences that money can’t buy become more important. The mainstream is coming to the understanding that life is short, it is made up of the things you’ve done, the places you’ve been and the people you’ve known. Fantasy sports events like the Sports Legends Challenge are creating opportunities for more people to experience more things and live better lives than they could before.

Shawn’s Graduation Speech for the GSU
Global Partners MBA Class of 2008

The four things I learned from my MBA program.

1. I’ve developed a physical dependency on PowerPoint.
2. I learned a new language.
3. I learned that anything worth learning can be conveyed in a chart
4. I learned to take existing models, charts, concepts and ideas and apply them to new sets of data.

I have elected to not simply tell you about these new competencies, but also to demonstrate them to you during the course of this speech. Item number one, my adeptness at PowerPoint that has been carefully honed over the course of the program, is best illustrated by the creation of this presentation. Number two is that I have learned a new language. To enter the global partners program, it is a prerequisite to know another language besides English. We were told that this was so that we would be able to quickly adapt and understand in the cultures and countries that we visited as part of the program. But we were lied to.

The REAL reason is that our professors wanted to make sure we would be able to learn a brand new language: the language of business. As MBA students, we have learned a brand new language, complete with its own vocabulary. I apologize to those who are in attendance who have not yet learned this language, because I would like to deliver the next segment of my speech in b-school-ese.

“4Q and 1600 ICH ago,
We determined that the FV of our WACC
Could be improved by exchanging CA for FA
and leveraging our IP.

After a SWOT analysis of our OTB,
We chose an MBA with GSU in the program called GP.
In Oct. 07 in CS 600, the Cof’08 began.
We met P-Y and KDL. And also Robin M.

We learned Econ and Pol Strat, Comm Dip and Int Bus,
Bus Law and Bus Mark, and Cost and Info Sys
In our IT class we read how HDVD
Would go DOA thanks to PS3
And in P-Y’s Ops class at IAE
We learned to streamline Mfg using JIT

We saw RDJ and flew to CDG
We changed our USD into RMB
In PRC we toured the BOG,
Then grabbed some US food at MickeyD’s

After all that, we’re back at GSU
Here in ATL with 1 thing to do,
To cross the stage and receive our degrees
And add 3 new letters to our CVs.”

The third thing that I learned was that anything worth learning can, and SHOULD, be communicated quickly and easily with a graph or chart. I would like to demonstrate the truth of that too you with a few examples.
· A Pie Chart About Pie
· A SWOT Analysis of the SWAT
· The f(x) = excitement x effort
· The Brown Cloud and
· The Classic Marketing Matrix

The fourth thing that I learned was how to apply existing models and analysis to new data sets to reveal new patterns and models. I feel that this skill can be accurately demonstration by taking the comedic model of Jeff Foxworthy’s “You Might Be a Redneck” and applying it to our own particular data set.

You might be a GPMBA…
1. If you’ve ever tried to calculate your student loan debt in Euros.
2. If you know the right way to pronounce “Strategy” and “Tactic”
3. If you’ve ever used the word “widget” to describe a theoretical product line.
Or if you’ve ever looked up the translation for “widget” in French or Portuguese.
4. If you’ve ever checked with a fellow student to know not only what class you have tomorrow, but what country it’s in.
5. If you’ve ever sat in a class taught in English and had to think “What language am I hearing?”
6. If you’ve ever lost 150 thousand dollars in a virtual margin call on the virtual stock market.
7. If you’ve ever accidentally started a nuclear war in Brazil or depleted the world’s oceans of their fish population.
8. If you’ve ever spent more than 8 hours in the DC airport. Twice.
9. If you’ve ever begun a question with the phrase “I was reading in the Wall Street Journal…”
10. If you’ve ever bragged that your new suit was made in China
Finally, If you’ve studied 20 subjects across 4 continents and traveled around the entire world in 432 days as part of your international business education…

I found this amazing video of a guy biking through the song Prisoner of Society on Guitar Hero World Tour. (If that made no sense to you, then you need to take 3 and a half minutes and watch this video.)

For more on the video, you can read this guy’s comment. As many of the nearly 1 million viewers noted, this video is good… a little TOO Good. Many YouTubers were immediately suspicious. Well, I first learned about the ad from Creativity.com, who was praising the work of Droga5, the agency that created it. So, yes, it was created by professional Ad Men. No, it was not shot by a group of GHWT loving kids in Indiana with a lot of free time on their hands, as we were deliberately meant to believe… but is that dishonest?

Another example is the band Boyce Avenue. The story is cliché and inspiring– three brothers in Florida start recording cover songs on YouTube, quickly gather 3 million views and 1 million fans, then start recording their own stuff and now they are releasing multiple platinum-selling albums and going on a national tour. I saw the video. These guys are good… a little TOO Good. You be the judge.

The inventor of Murketing, Rob Walker points out that today’s consumers assert they are not influenced by the messaging of “the Man’s” corporate broadcast media nor the silver-coated brand imaging of Mad. Ave’s Ad Wizards. But all our consumer data reports that we are buying MORE than ever before and our purchasing is (even more) based on Branding and Perceived Value.

So, in conclusion, today’s consumers want to buy, they just don’t want to be sold to.

What this leaves us is companies manufacturing “Homemade” advertising. Professional advertisers and marketers are now turning their talents to making messaging that looks like it came from amateurs. That it was made by your peers. I add my own word to the marketing lexicon-

Promateurs. noun. def. – The ad agency that made Bike Hero, the recording label that created Boyce Avenue, the makers of LonelyGirl15, and others. Antonym – Amfessionals. def. – The makers of the Doritos Super Bowl commercials.