Book Watch: The Shia Revival

Vali Nasr's new book on Shia-Sunni relations, and its long-term implications for the Middle East and US Foreign Policy, is going to be an important reference for years to come. The book is aimed at a general audience, and gives a summary of the history on Shia-Sunni relations. The bulk of the book is spent on recent history (since right before the Iranian revolution), and devotes a long chapter to the current US occupation of Iraq.

Having had just a general understanding of the Shia-Sunni "conflict", I learned a lot from this book. As expected, the Shiism, is not monolithic, and the schools in Qom and Najaf provide a good snapshot of the two major philosphies. The Qom clergy tend (though not all of them do) to approach things as Khomeni did: the Shia clergy should have a leading role in public affairs, i.e., an Islamic state. The Najaf school, as led by Sistani, believe that the Shia and Shia philosophy deserve to be heard, as part of a democratic process, but they do not believe that clergy should have final say on affairs of the state. The author gives a positive potrayal of Sistani as someone who cares for his people, but who does not believe the Shia should work for a Shia Islamic state in Iraq.

One point the author makes is that the situation in Iraq really worries the Sunnis in the Arab states. Much like the Islamic revolution in Iran was felt across the Sunni pockets in the Arab world, the Shia ascendance in Iraq, has led some Sunni fundamentalists to advocate sectarian conflict. Estimates place the Shia at 10-15% of the world's Moslem population, with the Sunnis comprising most of the rest. Sunni animosity towards the Shia has a long history, and in some quarters, it runs deep.

The author makes a convincing case that a key to success in the Middle East is managing Shia ascendance, and Shia-Sunni relations. This book is a great primer on that very subject. I recommend it highly. Scary to think that President Bush is rumored to not have known the difference between Shia and Sunni, before he took office. The book is well-written and extremely engaging.

UPDATE: Vali Nasr gave an excellent talk and Q&A session with the World Affairs Council of Northern California.

The Rosenfeld Effect

Art Rosenfeld, the father of energy efficiency, was honored at a recent U.C. Berkeley conference. Google has just made the conference available online. This is part of new partnership between Google and UC Berkeley. It's great living in the information age!

The Housing Bear

Nouriel Roubini is interviewed in NY Magazine. As we pointed out earlier, he has been bearish about housing and the economy in general.

Immigration: Europe and the U.S.

An interesting perspective from a Dutch-born, US-based academic on a possible reason why Muslims may have a harder time succeeding and adjusting in Europe: the welfare state in most European countries is a lot more generous and less demanding, and immigrants get trapped in the system for extended periods of time. Interaction outside of one's immediate group tends to be limited to trips to a goverment agency, which doesn't help one's self-confidence. He acknowledges that the Muslim immigrants to the U.S. probably have a higher proportion of middle-class individuals and families.

I could add that an expansive welfare state depends on higher taxes (compared to the U.S.), less-flexible eomployment laws, which means less job creation, thus less opportunity. This is a blog post and not a study, so I have no data to support this!

All of this is anecdotal, and not based on data analysis. I wonder what Economic or Social Science Research has to say about his hypothesis. At this point, I have no feel for whether his hypothesis is true or not.

Listen to the full interview here. It is an interesting perspective on the state of Muslim immigration in the Netherlands (and Europe).

UCSB's Recent Hires in Math & Physics

UCSB has hired some awesome Faculty in Math and Physics in the last year:

... The new Rumor Mill site confirms previous gossip I had heard that shows UC Santa Barbara having great success in hiring people in mathematical physics. Is Singer has been a regular visitor there in recent years, spending part of the year in Santa Barbara, part at MIT. This year they’ve hired two very good people: Dave Morrison and Sergei Gukov. Morrison has a mathematics background (algebraic geometry), and Gukov was educated as a physicist (a student of Witten’s), but they both do interesting things at the interface of the two subjects.

Also at UCSB, Michael Freedman has moved his Microsoft Research group down from Redmond, and it is now temporarily in residence at the KITP, waiting to move into offices in the building next door when it is finished and will house the California Nanosystems Institute. Freedman is a topologist and Fields medalist, who was hired away from UC San Diego by my ex-grad school roommate Nathan Myhrvold when he was running Microsoft Research.

Google Proposal To Increase PC Energy Efficiency

From the NY Times:

... The Google plan calls for a shift from multivoltage power supplies to a single 12-volt standard. Although voltage conversion would still take place on the PC motherboard, the simpler design of the new power supply would make it easier to achieve higher overall efficiencies.

The Google proposal is similar in its intent to an existing effort by the electric utility industry to offer computer makers financial incentives for designing more efficient power supplies for personal computers. Existing PC power supplies vary widely in efficiency, from as high as 90 percent to as low as 20 percent.

The existing effort, 80 Plus, sets an 80 percent efficiency standard as a goal. It is a partnership between Ecos Consulting, an environmental consulting firm, and a group of electric utility companies. Ecos began measuring the efficiency of computer power supplies in 2003 and found that none of them met the efficiency standard.

But a technical adviser for the utility project said in a telephone interview on Monday that since the program began last year, the industry has begun to move toward more efficient designs.

“We now have 70 compliant designs from 15 to 20 manufacturers,” said the adviser, Chris Calwell, vice president and director for policy and research at Ecos Consulting. The new designs are just becoming available in commercial products, he said.

Modern PC designs shift the control of voltage to the motherboards, making the multiple voltage requirements of industry standard power supplies unnecessary, wrote Urs Hölzle and William Weihl, the authors of the Google paper, “High-Efficiency Power Supplies for Home Computers and Servers.”

... The overall Google goal is to be applauded, Mr. Calwell said, but by redesigning and simplifying power supply design, he worries that it is possible that overall efficiency may not be improved significantly.

Both the Google engineers and Mr. Calwell agreed that there was a significant design flaw, which they described as “overprovisioning,” in today’s PC power supplies. “It’s like putting a 400-horsepower engine in every car, just because some cars have to tow large trailers every once in a while,” Mr. Calwell said.

The Google white paper argues that the opportunity for power savings is immense — by deploying the new power supplies in 100 million desktop PC’s running eight hours a day, it will be possible to save 40 billion kilowatt-hours over three years, or more than $5 billion at California’s energy rates.

Although Google does not plan to enter the personal computer market, the company is a large purchaser of microprocessors and has evolved a highly energy-efficient power supply system for its data centers.

Silicon.com Top Agenda Setters

Ray Ozzie tops the list.

Open Source Router

Vyatta's open source alternative to Cisco's router, is starting to gain traction.

GPL version 3

It appears the top Linux Kernel Hackers do not support GPL version 3. CNET has more details here.

The Philippines and Outsourcing

The Philippines has always been among the favorite destinations of Outsourcing specialists. For several years, articles on the topic always mention it right behind India and China. Here is a recent article cementing its postion among the leaders.

Book Watch: The Disposable American

Louis Uchitelle's new book is a definitive history of downsizing and layoffs over the last 60 years. It is full of moving stories of individuals and couples, whose lives were severely affected by getting the wave of layoffs that have plagued the U.S. economy. You may not agree with all his policy recommendations, but at least he puts forth ideas that politicians fail to mention. Personally, I don't really like promotions or job security based on seniority.

The book's strongest feature is how it puts the current state of employment in context: I really enjoyed being taken through the history of the labor movement and downsizing in corporate America. Worth reading.

SoCal Housing Market

The LA Times has an article that seems to confirm that the (SoCal) housing slowdown is real. The first graph is the Year-Over-Year change in the median sales price of all homes in Southern California (you can click on the graph/tables, if you wish to enlarge them):


The most recent data shows a 2.7% increase from Aug-05 to Aug-06, but as Kevin Drum notes, what's worrisome is the trend. If you look at the data, at the county level, you see that the inland counties are doing better than the coastal ones: no surprise there, since the housing prices are lower inland, and the bubble was more pronounced on the coasts:


The final piece of data from the article, is the volume of houses sold. Here we see significant declines across the board:


UPDATE: The SF Chronicle has a similar article, and the data for the Bay Area also points to a slowdown:

Talking About Foo Camp

Niall and Om have a podcast on their recent Foo Camp experience.

Macarthur Grants 2006

Four people based in California, but no one from Silicon Valley.

Christian Zionists

I really loved Gershom Gorenberg's book on Christian Zionists, and recommend it as a primer on this subject. Today's episode of Fresh Air was devoted to the subject, in particular, a new group called Christians United for Israel. I'm not surprised that Senators Santorum and Brownback attended this group's launch in Washington DC, but I find the fact that President Bush sent a recorded message to be broadcast at the event, very troubling. This is a group that believes we are close to Armageddon, and that a Middle East Peace process simply delays their redemption.

PLEASE listen to this episode of Fresh Air to understand what this group is all about. Is the Republican party completely beholden to people who interpret the bible in such a literal way?

Was the 2004 Election Stolen?

The results of statistical analyses presented in this Rolling Stone article, authored by RFK Jr., are compelling:

... In fact, the exit poll created for the 2004 election was designed to be the most reliable voter survey in history. The six news organizations -- running the ideological gamut from CBS to Fox News -- retained Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International,(22) whose principal, Warren Mitofsky, pioneered the exit poll for CBS in 1967(23) and is widely credited with assuring the credibility of Mexico's elections in 1994.(24) For its nationwide poll, Edison/Mitofsky selected a random subsample of 12,219 voters(25) -- approximately six times larger than those normally used in national polls(26) -- driving the margin of error down to approximately plus or minus one percent.(27)

On the evening of the vote, reporters at each of the major networks were briefed by pollsters at 7:54 p.m. Kerry, they were informed, had an insurmountable lead and would win by a rout: at least 309 electoral votes to Bush's 174, with fifty-five too close to call.(28) In London, Prime Minister Tony Blair went to bed contemplating his relationship with President-elect Kerry.(29)

As the last polling stations closed on the West Coast, exit polls showed Kerry ahead in ten of eleven battleground states -- including commanding leads in Ohio and Florida -- and winning by a million and a half votes nationally. The exit polls even showed Kerry breathing down Bush's neck in supposed GOP strongholds Virginia and North Carolina.(30) Against these numbers, the statistical likelihood of Bush winning was less than one in 450,000.(31) ''Either the exit polls, by and large, are completely wrong,'' a Fox News analyst declared, ''or George Bush loses.''(32)

But as the evening progressed, official tallies began to show implausible disparities -- as much as 9.5 percent -- with the exit polls. In ten of the eleven battleground states, the tallied margins departed from what the polls had predicted. In every case, the shift favored Bush. Based on exit polls, CNN had predicted Kerry defeating Bush in Ohio by a margin of 4.2 percentage points. Instead, election results showed Bush winning the state by 2.5 percent. Bush also tallied 6.5 percent more than the polls had predicted in Pennsylvania, and 4.9 percent more in Florida.(33)

According to Steven F. Freeman, a visiting scholar at the University of Pennsylvania who specializes in research methodology, the odds against all three of those shifts occurring in concert are one in 660,000. ''As much as we can say in sound science that something is impossible,'' he says, ''it is impossible that the discrepancies between predicted and actual vote count in the three critical battleground states of the 2004 election could have been due to chance or random error.'' (See The Tale of the Exit Polls)

Puzzled by the discrepancies, Freeman laboriously examined the raw polling data released by Edison/Mitofsky in January 2005. ''I'm not even political -- I despise the Democrats,'' he says. ''I'm a survey expert. I got into this because I was mystified about how the exit polls could have been so wrong.'' In his forthcoming book, Was the 2004 Presidential Election Stolen? Exit Polls, Election Fraud, and the Official Count, Freeman lays out a statistical analysis of the polls that is deeply troubling.

In its official postmortem report issued two months after the election, Edison/Mitofsky was unable to identify any flaw in its methodology -- so the pollsters, in essence, invented one for the electorate. According to Mitofsky, Bush partisans were simply disinclined to talk to exit pollsters on November 2nd(34) -- displaying a heretofore unknown and undocumented aversion that skewed the polls in Kerry's favor by a margin of 6.5 percent nationwide.(35)

Industry peers didn't buy it. John Zogby, one of the nation's leading pollsters, told me that Mitofsky's ''reluctant responder'' hypothesis is ''preposterous.''(36) Even Mitofsky, in his official report, underscored the hollowness of his theory: ''It is difficult to pinpoint precisely the reasons that, in general, Kerry voters were more likely to participate in the exit polls than Bush voters.''(37)

Now, thanks to careful examination of Mitofsky's own data by Freeman and a team of eight researchers, we can say conclusively that the theory is dead wrong. In fact it was Democrats, not Republicans, who were more disinclined to answer pollsters' questions on Election Day. In Bush strongholds, Freeman and the other researchers found that fifty-six percent of voters completed the exit survey -- compared to only fifty-three percent in Kerry strongholds.(38) ''The data presented to support the claim not only fails to substantiate it,'' observes Freeman, ''but actually contradicts it.''

What's more, Freeman found, the greatest disparities between exit polls and the official vote count came in Republican strongholds. In precincts where Bush received at least eighty percent of the vote, the exit polls were off by an average of ten percent. By contrast, in precincts where Kerry dominated by eighty percent or more, the exit polls were accurate to within three tenths of one percent -- a pattern that suggests Republican election officials stuffed the ballot box in Bush country.

Electricity & Gasoline Consumption By State

From the NY Times. Click on the image to enlarge it:



Update: Here is a time-series graph of per-capita electricity consumption. California has been flat for years, while the rest of the country has gone up 50%. Hat tip to Kevin Drum.

California's Energy Plan

Hopefully the rest of the country follows our lead. This is what the national energy plan should look like:

...The Democratic-controlled legislature and the Republican governor also agreed at that time on legislation to reduce industrial carbon dioxide emissions by 25 percent by 2020, a measure that affects not only power plants but also other large producers of carbon dioxide, including oil refineries and cement plants.

The state’s aim is to reduce emissions of climate-changing gases produced by burning coal, oil and gas. Other states, particularly New York, are moving in some of the same directions, but no state is moving as aggressively on as many fronts. No state has been at it longer. No state is putting more at risk.

Whether all this is visionary or deluded depends on one’s perspective. This is the state that in the early 1970’s jump-started the worldwide adoption of catalytic converters, the devices that neutralize most smog-forming chemicals emitted by tailpipes. This is the state whose per capita energy consumption has been almost flat for 30 years, even as per capita consumption has risen 50 percent nationally.

Taking on global warming is a tougher challenge. Though California was second in the nation only to Texas in emissions of carbon dioxide in 2001, and 12th in the world, it produced just 2.5 percent of the world’s total. At best, business leaders asked in a legislative hearing, what difference could California’s cuts make? And at what cost?

California, in fact, is making a huge bet: that it can reduce emissions without wrecking its economy, and therefore inspire other states — and countries — to follow its example on slowing climate change.

Harvard and UCLA

Harvard announced the elimination of early admissions, while UCLA announced a more "holistic" approach in evaluating prospective students. Both are noteworthy and may spur changes in other institutions of higher learning.

However, as readers of this blog know, I am a proponent for the elimination of Legacy Admissions (check here and here for recent posts on this subject). For institutions like Harvard and the U.C.'s, it will take a lot of courage for this to happen. Not all topnotch schools have Legacy Admissions: Caltech doesn't. It's probably why they have so many Nobel Prize winners among their alumni!

As I pointed out in a previous post, the top Asian schools don't have Legacy Admissions either. In order to maintain our leadership position in this globalized world, we need our best and brightest to go to our best schools. Not, as Warren Buffet would put it, winners of the ovarian lottery.

Manure-To-Electricity

Sh**t hits the fan :-) From the LA Times:

Angry investors say an O.C. businessman's methane project was merely a pitch to snare their millions, which he denies.

... With a folksy delivery, the Orange County businessman promised cutting-edge technology, a respected engineering firm and tax-exempt financing to extract methane gas from mountains of manure and use it to generate enough power to light a small city.

"He told me categorically that we would get our money back with interest and that the project was as good as gold," said Shmuel Erde, a Beverly Hills lender.

What Moriarty and his business partner, Wayne Stephens, didn't tell Erde and numerous others who altogether invested more than $10 million was that their company, Chino Organic Power Inc., had no licensed technology, no equipment, no permits — not even a guaranteed supply of manure.

Although manure-to-electricity plants have been used on a small scale to turn water-polluting cow waste into power, they are not particularly cost-effective and have never produced close to the amount of electricity Moriarty envisioned, documents and interviews show.

Another thing Moriarty didn't tell Erde and the others was that he had gone to prison in the 1980s in what then-U.S. Atty. Robert C. Bonner called "the most significant corruption case in recent California history."

Not surprisingly, the lofty energy plan has come crashing down, followed by a bankruptcy and accusations from angry investors, a number of whom have filed lawsuits alleging fraud by Moriarty and Stephens, a San Bernardino County businessman.

In interviews with 20 investors, many said they now believe the entire operation was a ruse to enrich the two.

State of the (Internet) Nation

This list of top google adwords is depressing!

Semiconductor Companies and Solar Energy

An article in today's SJ Mercury News highlights a growing number of semiconductor companies are eyeing the solar energy market:

... ``It makes sense for companies in the semiconductor industry to focus on solar,'' said David Edwards, an analyst at investment firm Think Equity in San Francisco. ``The industry is large enough, it's economically viable as a business, and the growth potential is compelling.''

Last week, Applied Materials, the world's biggest maker of semiconductor manufacturing equipment, announced that it was launching a major push to sell the machines that make solar cells in factories that resemble chip plants.

``Our aim with this strategy is to bring the cost of building solar cells down,'' said Mike Splinter, chief executive of Applied Materials in Santa Clara. ``We think it enables the solar market to grow faster. We are going to see an explosion in the factory growth.'

... Splinter said that Applied Materials hopes its solar equipment manufacturing business will grow into a $500 million enterprise by 2010. Market researchers estimate that the overall solar equipment market will grow from $1 billion in 2006 to $3 billion in 2010. That opportunity explains why Applied spent $484 million on a solar acquisition in May.

Another long-term Silicon Valley company, Cypress Semiconductor, has also jumped on its chance to diversify into solar with last year's spinoff of its SunPower solar cell manufacturing division. Last year SunPower staged the valley's most successful initial public offering in terms of a first-day return.

Dick Swanson, chief technology officer and founder of SunPower, says the solar industry began consuming more silicon than the semiconductor industry in 2001. His company continues to expand manufacturing in the Philippines, where it is adding a factory next year with much more capacity than its first one.

Meanwhile, the solar-cell market leader, Japan's Sharp Electronics, expects to expand its capacity for producing solar cells at a rate that is faster than the market's growth, said Ron Kenedi, vice president of the solar energy solutions group within Sharp Electronics.

``We are really bullish on the market,'' Kenedi said.

So is Silicon Valley about to be renamed Solar Valley? Not necessarily. On average, the solar industry generates about $8 in revenue for every silicon wafer it consumes, Swanson said. By contrast, some silicon wafers can generate thousands of dollars in revenue.

Power to the Peaceful

We first attended the annual Power to the Peaceful festival back in September 2001. Back then, it was held in Precita Park, and was a relatively small event. We have attended it every year since then. Yesterday's festival was incredible: I estimated at least 20K people packed into Speedway Meadow, in Golden Gate Park. There were two stages, a DJ area, and lots of progressive organizations and vendors. As usual, the event was FREE, but donations were encouraged. Check Flickr for an assortment of pics from the event.

Kudos to Michael Franti and the rest of the organizing committee. We in the Bay Area are blessed to have so many great festivals available on a regular basis.

Best Presentations Ever

I am loving this. Check it out!

Video Express

One of my favorite technology writers, Robert Cringely, speculates on what Apple may announce next week.

Billboards

Traveling or living in Asia, one can't help but notice the increasing consumerism and purchase power of the world's most populous continent. This is concretely manifested through the gigantic billboards one comes across a lot of major Asian cities.

I recently stumbled across this series of photographs of billboards in Manila. Before you read the commentary, just scroll down and glance at the images. The size of some of these things just blows my mind. I'm not crazy about some of the ads either, they seem so uninspired and obvious. We need an infusion of creative talent in the Asian advertising scene.

Green REIT's

Is there such a thing as an ethical REIT? The Christian Science Monitor interviews a pioneer of this concept. As a REIT investor, it's something I need to start paying attention to:

What makes a building 'green'?
What makes a building green is a variety of factors: using a site that had been used once before versus going out and ripping up farmland, being next to mass transit ... using recycled materials in terms of the carpets or tiles, [and] whatever you do on the site - recycling it. The runoff from the rain - you would capture that water, often called gray water, and recirculate it to irrigate the landscaping.

How can an investor tell when a building is really green?
Anybody could say: "I want to be green." There's a US Green Building Council, which is a nonprofit organization, which has put out LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) standards. You apply to them, and they will certify that your building is green. You must independently hire someone to audit that you did this [or that].... We have 14 buildings that have either been certified or are in the process. And we have about seven more that are about ready to get started. We think we've done more than anybody else, but it's a little hard to keep track.

That's 21 buildings out of a portfolio of how many?
About 735 buildings. So we have a long way to go to having a green portfolio. But in order to address that ... if space goes vacant and we have a new tenant come in and we have to put in new carpet and new tile, we use the same standard as we would use if we're trying to make the building green. We're trying to use recycled materials, use monitors for the lighting to minimize energy consumption. And we're not doing that to get it certified, but just because it will lower the operating costs. So we're slowly converting over the portfolio.

Are you alone in offering green buildings?
No, there are other companies doing it. Some are private developers, so unfortunately the investor we're talking about couldn't access them. [For example,] the Hines organization, which is a very well-respected developer, is doing a building in Manhattan that way. Some other REITs have done some. But I think I could say without blushing that we're doing more of it than anybody else in the publicly traded world.

The Bay Area and Artisan Chocolates

From the SF Chronicle.

Waging a Living

I'm so happy I taped this last week. Find a way to see this truly amazing documentary. The online interview with the filmmaker is a good place to start.

2005 Venture Capital Report

Silicon Valley received the lions share of funding. I guess Paul Graham won his debate with Fred Wilson :-) New York received less venture funding than Denver!