The future is bright if only we can figure out how we're going to afford it.

The late, great Douglas Adams once described the human search for happiness as a curious exercise in moving around little green bits of paper. From this perspective, a business that owns nothing and produces nothing but instead specializes in the movement of little bits of paper and bases its existence on abstract and changeable value seems a bit dumb. But that's what an investment bank is when one applies a little logic, and in a growing economy the going seems easy. But a slowing or *gasp* a shrinking of the economy can make such a company worthless overnight, as the meltdown of Bear Stearns demonstrates. The US Treasury has temporarily averted the crises and the NYSE was one of the few markets in not to end the day in a deep hole. Having said that, don't expect me to act surprised if over the next few weeks panicky investors create the very recession they've spent months trying to avoid. It would hardly be the first time.

One thing that is always worth a lot is gold, after all it is the physical wealth that used to be money, would later underpin and standardize the value of money, and today acts as a back-up plan for many central banks. The CBC reports that Torontonians are all to happy to dump expensive jewelry for the promise of $1000 an ounce. As the story notes, most jewelry is far from pure gold and fetches much less, but neglects to explain that the rest is mainly copper that must be seperated melting the metal down. Maybe that was a little too technical for people.

Anyway, as much as money is a fantastic exercise in abstraction, let's talk about something free. Ars Technica reports that Firefox 3 Beta 4 has shed much of the bloat observed in 2.0.0.12 and may just be the fastest and least memory-intensive browser available, at least according to Mozilla. The biggest pig? Opera? Nope. Safari? No. Okay, I know most people would guess IE7 and if you did, you're right! Unless of course you count IE8 or Safari 3, both development versions that crashed during the test.

Apple has been busy at the patent office. Following on a filing for what appears to be a DVR version of the Apple TV, the less immediate future may see transparent touch-screen panels that can use both sides to display information. That would make for one heck of a laptop / tablet PC. Other parts of the filing show an application of the same technology to mobile phones. It's all very Star Trek.