RTFA: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/25/technology/24cnd…

Microsoft has won a high-profile technology industry battle with Google and Yahoo to invest in the social networking upstart Facebook.

The two companies said on Wednesday that Microsoft would invest 240 million for a 1.6 percent stake in Facebook. The investment values the three-year-old Facebook, which will bring in about 150 million in revenue this year, at 15 billion.

I’m no high paid corporate executive doing blow off the ass of a $1000 hooker, so I could be missing something critical here, but paying $240 million for 1.6% ownership seems like a terrible decision for Microsoft. Let’s say that facebook continues to make $150 million / year. It’s possible they will increase their profit, but the internet is a wild place and they could go the way of instant messenger and pogs. 1.6% of $150 million is $2.4 million a year, which means it will take 100 years to make back the $240 million investment. Again, I feel like I’m missing something critical here, besides the high class prostitute.

RTFA: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7042090.stm

The US military has developed a new programme known as the Human Terrain System (HTS) to study social groups in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The HTS depends heavily on the co-operation of anthropologists, with their expertise in the study of human beings and their societies.

Steve Fondacaro, a retired special operations colonel overseeing the HTS, is keen to recruit cultural anthropologists.

“Cultural anthropologists are focused on understanding how societies make decisions and how attitudes are formed. They give us the best vision to see the problems through the eyes of the target population,” he said.

RTFA: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20071022/ts_afp/imfeco…

The head of the International Monetary Fund, Rodrigo Rato, warned Monday of a potential “abrupt fall” in the US dollar that could roil the global economy.

“There are risks that an abrupt fall in the dollar could either be triggered by, or itself trigger, a loss of confidence in dollar assets,” Rato said at the close of annual meetings here of the IMF and the World Bank.

The outgoing IMF managing director spoke here as the European single currency hit a new high of 1.4347 dollars and global equity markets plunged amid renewed fears a US credit crunch could pitch the world’s biggest economy into recession.