FAIR TRADER

Movie Recommendations, Vol. 7

2007-08-25T09:36:00.000-07:00

Here are some films and PBS programs, we have enjoyed over the last several months:

Artic Son: A beautiful documentary from the PBS series POV.
After the Wedding: A classic from Denmark
Avenue Montaigne
Devil's Playground: When Amish kids turn 16, they are allowed to experience the "English" world. Nevertheless, an astounding 90% decide to join the church and adopt the Amish lifestyle.
The Pursuit of Happyness
Family Law (from Argentina)
Following Sean
The Squid and the Whale
The Bridge: Suicides and the Golden Gate Bridge
Once: A gem from Dublin, Ireland!
10 Questions for the Dalai Lama
Waitress (a classic film written & directed by the late Adrienne Shelly)
Sex Slaves (an online chat with the filmmakers)
Notes on a Scandal (Judi Dench + Cate Blanchett)
Who the #$&% Is Jackson Pollock?
A Good Year (Ridley Scott directs a romance set in Provence)
The Girl From Paris
Black Gold (from Independent Lens, a documentary on Fair Trade and Coffee in Ethiopia)
The Power of Community: Cuba and Peak Oil
A Zen Life (a documentary on the life of D.T. Suzuki)
Quinceanera (Indie film set in Echo Park; 2006 Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner)
Winter Passing (Ed Harris and Will Ferrell in a moving indie drama)
So Much, So Fast (Frontline documentary chronicling the journey of a family's fight against ALS)

Previous Movie Recommendations can be found here.

Station Q

2007-05-01T09:15:00.000-07:00

Based in UC Santa Barbara and led by Michael Freedman, Station Q is a MSFT funded research group focused on topological quantum computing.

Nursing Shortage in the U.S.

2007-04-12T20:41:00.000-07:00

Excellent (audio) documentary from WBUR in Boston. Unless young Americans start taking up nursing, we will have a massive crisis in the next decade or two. Thirty thousand nurses from overseas are being recruited to work in the U.S. every year. Half are from the Philippines.

Movie Recommendations, Vol. 6

2007-04-02T11:31:00.000-07:00

Here are some films and PBS programs, we have enjoyed over the last several months:

Gypo
Volver
Little Children
Babel
Time to Leave (another classic from Francois Ozon)
The Impressionists (Manet, Monet, Renoir, Cezanne, Degas, ....)
The Motel
The Lives of Others (a beautiful film set in East Germany in the mid 1980s)
After Innocence (documentary on men freed through The Innocence Project)
The U.S. vs. John Lennon
Who Killed The Electric Car
Hand of God (from the PBS series Frontline)
Horatio's Drive (a Ken Burns documentary)
Peace One Day (documentary on the U.N. Global Day of Peace)
Here to Stay (documentary on Filipino & other immigrant nurses in Ireland)
One Bright Shining Moment (documentary on the '72 McGovern campaign)
Look Both Ways (another gem from down under)
Sherry Baby
Bulworth (1998 classic from Warren Beatty)
In the Shadow of the Stars (released in 1991; Oscar-winning documentary about the SF Opera)
The Yes Men (we saw this a while back: funny documentary about a group of anti-WTO activists)

Previous Movie Recommendations can be found here:

Philippines as an Outsourcing Center

2007-02-25T19:34:00.000-08:00

From the Washington Post:

... The Philippines, with a large pool of English speakers and a cultural affinity with the United States, is developing as a strong second to India in the global outsourcing market.

... The Philippines earned $3.6 billion from outsourcing in 2006, up 50 percent from the previous year, and the government estimates revenue could jump to $12.2 billion by 2010 as the industry diversifies.
India, the leader in the global outsourcing market, earned $6.2 billion in the 12 months to March 2006, and this is likely to jump to $8 billion in the year to March 2007.
Even outsourcing firms based in India are moving some of their operations to the Philippines.
... "If you want to do a marketing kind of thing, India is not the place. Go to the Philippines because the cultural affinity is very, very high," Karnik said at a recent conference in Manila.
The stakes are high, with the Philippines tapping less than a fifth of the $80-billion global outsourcing market at the end of 2006. India corners at least 43 percent.

Green Building Goes Mainstream

2007-01-26T11:40:00.000-08:00

From the Wall St. Journal (subscription required).

Healthcare Debate: 2 Sides in a Nutshell

2007-01-25T21:01:00.000-08:00

Great overview from Brad Delong.

A.T. Kearney Ranks Outsourcing Hubs

2007-01-25T10:29:00.000-08:00

The Philippines finished in the Top 4. From the Wall St. Journal (subscription required):

Yet Another Healthcare Discussion

2007-01-24T14:25:00.000-08:00

Led by Steve Pearlstein, over at the Washington Post. Here is Pearlstein's article on healthcare legislation.

Here is a link to last week's discussion.

M.I.T. Panel Backs Geothermal Energy

2007-01-22T17:31:00.000-08:00

From the M.I.T. press office:

A comprehensive new MIT-led study of the potential for geothermal energy within the United States has found that mining the huge amounts of heat that reside as stored thermal energy in the Earth's hard rock crust could supply a substantial portion of the electricity the United States will need in the future, probably at competitive prices and with minimal environmental impact.

Solar Industry Continues to Gain Momentum

2007-01-22T10:30:00.000-08:00

Great article on the challenges facing the Solar energy industry.

Ebay Founders and Philanthropy

2007-01-21T18:38:00.000-08:00

From the LA Times.

Healthcare Discussion

2007-01-17T12:01:00.000-08:00

Led by Steve Pearlstein over at the Washington Post.

Carl Icahn on Corporate CEO's

2007-01-16T08:47:00.000-08:00

From Business Week:

I have my anti-Darwinian metaphor: The CEO is the fraternity brother type who is great to have a drink with. He's a survivor and maybe not all that smart, but he works his way up the ladder in the corporation. And if you're a survivor you never have someone beneath you who's smarter than you. So you eventually work your way to CEO. You have someone a little dumber than you underneath, and eventually we'll have morons running everything...which we're getting closer to.

I wonder if the CEO's are also those who instinctively live by the, recently popular, 48 Laws of Power :-)

The iPhone

2007-01-10T22:31:00.000-08:00

I was at mac world for the 3rd straight year, and
stumbled upon an hour long demo of the new iPhone. The
user interface (UI) is amazing: it is so simple to use
and so different from what's out there.

The device is beautiful, has only ONE button, but what
sets it apart is the software and UI. Your voicemails
are actually listed out, like emails in an inbox. So
you can jump around and check them in the order you
want. Plus, you can fast forward and rewind a
voicemail using a scrollbar -- no more need to replay
a looooong voicemail, just to get that phone number at
the end. Conference calls are a snap to arrange.
Listening to a song using the built-in ipod while
waiting for a phone call? No problem, the iphone will
automatically pause the tune you are listening to, and
alert you of an incoming call, and start the tune once
you hang up.

The Safari web browser rendered pages as it would on a
normal computer. You can move around in a page, and
double-tap the screen to zoom in. The email app was
well designed, and the photo application was
impressive as well.

Set aside the fact that the thing only supports
Cingular in the US, it's still the best portable web
browser/ipod/email device/photo app out there. If
anything you can use it to browse the web, and chekc
your email via wifi. The browser is as good as what
you would get with a laptop.

Its really hard to describe the simplicity and
elegance of the user interface. But in my book, it
really is revolutionary: most competitive devices have
a built-in/permanent key board. The iphone has ONLY
ONE button -- but it is orders of magnitude simpler
and more intuitive than anything on the market. The
closest analogy I can think of is the original
macintosh, and how it simplified the pc for the
regular user. The hardware design is elegant, but the
software and user experience is what makes this an
amazing product.

I normally don't gush over new devices, but this
device took my breath away. It is awesome! I just wish
it were cheaper, and not limited to Cingular. Oh well,
I'm sure they will sell a boatload. You can feel the
pent-up demand inside mac world. When people are
crowding around a device displayed inside a glass box,
to gawk and take pictures of it, you know the product
will be a hit.

David Pogue (who writes for the nytimes and o'reilly)
has a review of the iphone. He actually used one for
an hour, and Steve Jobs was on hand to answer his
questions!

Movie Recommendations, Vol. 5

2006-12-18T09:19:00.000-08:00

Here are some films and PBS programs, we have enjoyed over the last six months:

Forty Shades of Blue
Thank You For Smoking (Brilliant Comedy!)
Solo Con Tu Pareja (a classic from the makers of Y Tu Mama Tambien)
Michael Palin: Sahara (what a great travel documentary)
Status Anxiety
Death in Gaza
Curb Your Enthusiasm, Season 5
The Talent Given Us
Legacy
Waging A Living
Don't Move (I love Sergio Castellitto!)
The Last Kiss (Italian gem)
Lonesome Jim
Sexo Com Amor (awesome comedy from Chile)
Russian Dolls (the much awaited sequel to L'Auberge Espagnole)
Paper Dolls (Filipino drag queens in Israel, some with day jobs caring for elderly Orthodox Jews, in a conservative suburb of Tel Aviv!)
Omar and Pete
American Gun
Capitol Crimes (Bill Moyers' documentary on the Abramoff affair)
Film Geek
Iraq for Sale
The King (starring Gael Garcia Bernal and William Hurt)
The Fire Next Time
Changing Times (starring Gerard Depardieu and Catherine Deneuve)
Take My Eyes (A beautiful Spanish drama)
Con Man
Blue Vinyl (a cult hit in the Green Building industry)
A Tout De Suite

Previous Movie Recommendations can be found here:

Craigslist and The Street

2006-12-11T09:22:00.000-08:00

Great post from the NY Times. I guess The Street is not familiar with the Triple Bottom Line:

Jim Buckmaster, the chief executive of Craigslist, caused lots of head-scratching Thursday as he tried to explain to a bunch of Wall Street types why his company is not interested in “monetizing” his ridiculously popular Web operation. Appearing at the UBS global media conference in New York, Mr. Buckmaster took questions from the bemused audience, which apparently could not get its collective mind around the notion that Craigslist exists to help Web users find jobs, cars, apartments and dates — and not so much to make money.

Wendy Davis of MediaPost describes the presentation as a “a culture clash of near-epic proportions.” She recounts how UBS analyst Ben Schachter wanted to know how Craigslist plans to maximize revenue. It doesn’t, Mr. Buckmaster replied (perhaps wondering how Mr. Schachter could possibly not already know this). “That definitely is not part of the equation,” he said, according to MediaPost. “It’s not part of the goal.”

“I think a lot of people are catching their breath right now,” Mr. Schachter said in response.

The Tech Trader Daily blog ponders this question: “If YouTube was worth $1.65 billion, who knows what Craigslist would be worth if Jim and [site founder] Craig Newmark ever considred becoming — what’s the word? — capitalists.”

Craigslist charges money for job listings, but only in seven of the cities it serves ($75 in San Francisco; $35 in the others). And it charges for apartment listings in New York ($10 a pop). But that is just to pay expenses.

Mr. Schachter still did not seem to understand. How about running AdSense ads from Google? Craigslist has considered that, Mr. Buckmaster said. They even crunched the numbers, which were “quite staggering.” But users haven’t expressed an interest in seeing ads, so it is not going to happen.

Following the meeting, Mr. Schachter wrote a research note, flagged by Tech Trader Daily, which suggests that he still doesn’t quite get the concept of serving customers first, and worrying about revenues later, if at all (and nevermind profits). Craigslist, the analyst wrote, “does not fully monetize its traffic or services.”

Mr. Buckmaster said the company is doubling in size every year, as measured by page views and listings.

Larry Dignan, writing on Between the Lines blog at ZDNet, called Mr. Buckmaster “delightfully communist,” and described the audience as “confused capitalists wondering how a company can exist without the urge to maximize profits.”

4-Star Video

2006-12-08T06:59:00.000-08:00

The SF Bay Guardian on the passing away of David Ayoob, the founding owner of our neighborhood video store:

The death of David Ayoob didn't get a lot of headlines. He wasn't famous in that way; he never ran for office or made speeches. But everyone on Cortland Avenue knew him, and when he died suddenly of a heart attack at 53, Bernal Heights — and the city — lost a great citizen.

Ayoob ran 4-Star Video, and he was the essence of a good small businessperson. He was active in the community and friendly to everyone and treated his employees well. (When he opened a second shop on Potrero Hill, he made two former employees partners in the business and let them run the new outlet.) His shop felt like the neighborhood — full of a diverse collection of people, with plenty of kids and dogs running around. Everyone was welcome.

As one post on a Bernal listserv put it, "With David it was never just about running a business. Bernal was his family. He was a larger-than-life character. The fabric of the neighborhood is weaker, a bit less comforting, and a lot less colorful without him." Sup. Tom Ammiano added, "He had such a wonderful heart, so generous." We'll all miss him.

The AMS on PageRanks

2006-12-07T07:18:00.000-08:00

The American Mathematical Society has a detailed article on Page Ranks.

The Job Market for India's College Graduates

2006-12-06T15:43:00.000-08:00

Very similar to what is happening in China:

... But the chance to learn such skills is still a prerogative reserved, for the most part, for the modern equivalent of India’s upper castes — the few thousand students who graduate each year from academies like the Indian Institutes of Management and the Indian Institutes of Technology. Their alumni, mostly engineers, walk the hallways of Wall Street and Silicon Valley and are stewards for some of the largest companies.

In the shadow of those marquee institutions, most of the 11 million students in India’s 18,000 colleges and universities receive starkly inferior training, heavy on obedience and light on useful job skills.

Students, executives and educators say this two-tier education system is locking millions of people into the bottom berths of the economy, depriving the country of talent and students of the chance to improve their lot. For those who succeed, what counts is the right skills.

... India is that rare country where it seems to get harder to find a job the more educated you are. In the 2001 census, college graduates had higher unemployment — 17 percent — than middle or high school graduates.

But as graduates complain about a lack of jobs, companies across India see a lack of skilled applicants. The contradiction is explained, experts say, by the poor quality of undergraduate education. India’s thousands of colleges are swallowing millions of new students every year, only to turn out degree holders whom no one wants to hire.

A study published by the software trade group last year concluded that only 10 percent of graduates with nonspecialized degrees were considered employable by leading companies, compared with 25 percent of engineers.

A YouTube For Data

2006-12-05T08:48:00.000-08:00

Swivel launches next week.

Companion Blog

2006-12-04T09:40:00.000-08:00

I have started a companion blog, devoted to market analysis in support of Green Industries. I hope to update that blog weekly, and this blog will be updated whenever I come across interesting articles.

Release 2.0

2006-11-29T08:48:00.000-08:00

O'Reilly Media has acquired Esther Dyson's newsletter Release 1.0:

The Job Market for College Graduates in China

2006-11-28T11:27:00.000-08:00

Has gotten a lot tougher:

A tide of more than 30,000 students with polished résumés and high hopes surged into a job fair here so eager to meet with employers that they shattered four glass doors and splayed the side walls of an escalator in what became a near riot.

As the crowd of youths swelled out of control, students and security guards said, police tried to beat back the throng but to no avail. Pushing, screaming and climbing over one another, the students charged on, heading for the booths inside the Zhongyuan International Exhibition Center, where company recruiters waited with the keys to China's new economy.

"You didn't even need to walk in the main hall, because people were sweeping you along all the time," said Hou Shuangshuang, 23, an e-commerce major with long hair who was among the students who overflowed the job fair when it opened Sunday. "At some points, your feet couldn't even touch the ground."

Hou and her classmates from Zhengzhou University, along with students from other schools in this Henan province city about 500 miles south of Beijing, provided a dramatic example of rising anxiety over employment among millions of Chinese students. After years in which graduates were ensured of a good job in the fast-growing economy, the number of degree-holders has outstripped the number of jobs, and the guarantees have evaporated.

"I don't think we have a very bright future," said Yu Honghua, 23, another e-commerce major at Zhengzhou University who shoved her way into the fair. "I saw only one company that needed students who majored in e-commerce, and they just needed one person."

... So far, the party has delivered on its part of the bargain: The economy has grown by more than 9 percent a year recently, and the main beneficiaries have been educated urbanites. Content to claim their share in the prosperity, most students have shown little interest in politics since the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989.

But a large pool of unemployed or underemployed university graduates, some analysts have suggested, could become a new breeding ground for opposition. An educated opposition, they said, would have far more organizational and ideological ability -- and present a greater threat to the government -- than the left-behind farmers who have been the main source of unrest in recent years.

The Labor and Social Security Ministry estimated recently that as many as 4.9 million youths will graduate from universities by the end of 2007, up by nearly 20 percent over 2006. Another 49.5 million will graduate from high school, also a 20 percent increase. The sharp climb in graduation rates represents a dramatic improvement in the lives of many Chinese, made possible by the economic transformation that has taken place here over the past quarter-century.

But indications have emerged that, booming as it is, the economy may not be able to absorb that many degree-holders into the jobs for which they are being trained. "The fact is that it's very hard for college students to get the right job these days," said Zhang Xuxin, a Zhengzhou student with close-cropped hair and plastic-rimmed glasses who plans to pursue postgraduate studies next year. "You may have a job, but it's very hard to have an ideal one."

A waitress in a German restaurant near Beijing's Ritan Park, for instance, said she has been looking for work in the computer industry since graduating last summer, but in the meantime, she has to serve sausages and beer to pay the rent because nothing is available in her field.

... Tensions over employment after graduation have exploded repeatedly in recent months, betraying the pressure students say they feel. Students at Shengda Economics, Trade and Management College, affiliated with Zhengzhou University, rioted in June when they discovered that their diplomas would not be the same as those from the university itself, putting them at a disadvantage in job hunting. A similar riot erupted last month at the Ganjiang Vocational and Technical Institute in Jiangxi province south of here. The Hong Kong-based Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy has recorded 10 such disturbances since summer.

Turn Around in the Philippines

2006-11-25T08:19:00.000-08:00

Business Week has a pair of articles: links to part I and part II.

Buy Nothing Day

2006-11-24T08:14:00.000-08:00

Is today. I wonder how this group is faring?

Low Energy Lifestyle

2006-11-19T10:18:00.000-08:00

From the Washington Post:

A band of idealists in the mountains of North Carolina is trying to build a low-energy lifestyle. But must we all live like hippies in the woods to make a difference?

The Merc on New Resource Bank

2006-11-15T07:56:00.000-08:00

The SJ Mercury News has an article on New Resource Bank:

... Hoping to cash in on fast-growing demand for solar power, organic food and other green industries, a group of investors -- including a number of prominent Silicon Valley business leaders -- has formed what it is calling the nation's first commercial bank targeting green industries. New Resource Bank holds its grand opening today in San Francisco.

The bank is headquartered in a building on Howard Street ranked as ``gold certified'' under green building standards because of its recycled materials, non-toxic paints and energy-efficient lighting and heating systems.

... The bank is modeling itself after Silicon Valley Bank, which began with one branch in San Jose in 1983. By catering to technology and life sciences businesses -- trying to understand them and respond to their needs better than large banks did -- Silicon Valley Bank has boomed, and now has 30 locations from New York to Shanghai, with $5.4 billion in assets.

... One of the first deals by New Resource Bank is a partnership with SunPower, a San Jose company that makes solar panels. Under the terms, the bank will make 25-year loans to homeowners to install solar panels, so that the monthly payments are similar to what the customers' electricity bills had been.

So far, environmentalists also like the idea.

Eric Antebi, Sierra Club spokesman, noted that socially responsible mutual funds began about 15 years ago, followed by venture capital firms five years ago that focused on environmental technology. Banks are the next logical step, he said.

``Groups like the Sierra Club can reach people's hearts,'' Antebi said, ``but banks can reach their wallets.''

Washington Post on Biomass

2006-11-14T10:04:00.000-08:00

It's amazing how many articles get written up about cellulosic ethanol. The Post's article is a good place to start. First off, what are the sources or inputs for this type of fuel:

... If ambitious plans taking shape in Washington and in state capitals come to fruition, this pile of stalks and many more like it will become the oil wells of the 21st century. The idea is to run the nation's transportation system largely on alcohol produced from bulk plant material, weaning America from foreign oil and the risks that go with it, including wars, global warming and terrorism.
Farmers have pushed for years to get more people using gasoline mixed with ethanol made from corn kernels, but so far such ethanol has replaced only about 3 percent of the nation's gasoline, and by most estimates, the country would never be able to grow enough corn to replace more than 10 or 12 percent of its fuel supply.

How is the fuel produced?

... Cellulose, like starch, is made up of glucose molecules, but packed so tightly they're extremely hard to break apart. Plants use cellulose chiefly as a structural material -- it helps trees and grasses stand upright. If efficient ways were developed to break open the molecules, a wide variety of agricultural wastes or specially planted energy crops could feed the new industry.
Scientific progress has been slow, but now it seems to be accelerating. Enzymes needed for the process used to cost more than $5 per gallon of ethanol, but biotechnology companies, under government research contracts, have reduced that to 30 cents per gallon. A handful of small companies, exploiting the drop, are already making small amounts of ethanol from biomass, and claim that they are close to doing so at competitive prices. Not only are they shopping for locations for bigger plants, they are also signing contracts with farmers to supply raw material.
A remarkable variety of groups, ranging from the Natural Resources Defense Council to conservative national-security hawks, have endorsed plans for biomass ethanol. "I've never seen anything with this many interest groups lining up behind it," said Brent Erickson, a vice president at the Biotechnology Industry Organization, which supports the efforts. A study by the government's Oak Ridge National Laboratory has estimated that the United States could replace more than 30 percent of its imported oil with fuel and chemicals made from biomass. Coupled with domestic oil, more corn ethanol and improved automobile efficiency, that would take the nation a long way toward energy independence.

But are there examples where ethanol has been used on a large scale?

... If the notion that a country the size of the United States could power its vehicle fleet on what amounts to moonshine seems crazy, consider this: Brazil is already well on its way to running a fleet on rum. After a 30-year campaign, Brazil has replaced 40 percent of its gasoline with alcohol produced from sugar cane. With new oil wells coming on line this year, the country is expected to declare independence from foreign oil producers.

Investment is starting to pour in, but the technology is largely unproven:

... Speculative investment capital and even money from some of the big oil companies is moving into the field. A handful of biomass-ethanol companies have built pilot plants, and some are scouting locations for bigger facilities. Politicians are trying to hurry the industry along, with Congress dangling potential loan guarantees to pioneer companies.
Yet fundamental questions about the biomass alternative have yet to be answered. The economics of making ethanol from biomass remain unproven on a commercial scale. Simply collecting all the necessary straw, cornstalks, wood chips and other waste would be a vast logistical problem, and growing energy crops would require big changes in U.S. agriculture.
Nobody is even sure how to store most types of biomass -- an elementary problem in producing a year-round fuel from a seasonal feedstock. That's the question the pile of cornstalks in Nebraska is meant to answer.
Scientists have projected that in the long run, ethanol made from biomass could be cheaper than gasoline or corn ethanol, costing as little as 60 cents a gallon to produce and selling for less than $2 a gallon at the pump. But right now it would be more expensive than gasoline, and the low prices are likely to be achieved only after large plants have been built and technical breakthroughs achieved in operating them.
Perhaps the biggest issue is this: Time and again, the country has grown interested in alternative fuels only to drop the subject as soon as oil prices fell. Will the United States be able to make a plan and stick with it for the long haul?

Jade Planet

2006-11-13T06:30:00.000-08:00

At this year's Green Fest, I picked up a pair of Pachira boots from Jade Planet. Listed at $75, these boots made from recycled materials, were on sale for $39! Looking forward to slipping them on.

Green Fest last year was when I launched this blog. Happy 1st anniversary to FairTrader.blogspot.com !

Rush Was In Agony

2006-11-09T10:58:00.000-08:00

Amazing quote from Rush Limbaugh following the 2006 Midterm elections (hat tip to Andrew Sullivan):

"There have been a bunch of things going on in Congress, some of this legislation coming out of there that I have just cringed at, and it has been difficult coming in here, trying to make the case for it when the people who are supposedly in favor of it can't even make the case themselves - and to have to come in here and try to do their jobs."

As Sullivan points out:

All together now: Awwww. I'm so sorry Limbaugh had to lie through his teeth to try and keep in the good graces of his Republican masters. Have you ever heard of intellectual honesty, Mr Limbaugh? You can look it up in the dictionary.

Desperate Realtors

2006-11-08T19:51:00.000-08:00

From Nouriel Roubini:

I was this morning on CNBC's Squawk Box facing off the president of the National Association of Realtors (NAR). The NAR is becoming so "desperate" that is now wasting $40 million in an advertising (call it spin) campaign - the first ever in its history - that is titled with the Orwellian slogan "It is a Great Time to Buy or Sell a Home" (sic!).

More realistically, as David Rosenberg (the sober chief US economist for Merrill Lynch) has titled one of his most recent studies of the US housing market we are now at the "D" level for the housing market where "D...is for Desperation" as he put it. Realtors and home builders must be reall desperate to waste $40m in an double-speak orwellian campaign of spin, lies and non-sense. The reality is the "It is A Lousy Time to Buy or Sell a Home". It is a lousy time to buy as prices are falling - at an annualized rate of 10% for new homes - and they will be falling another 20 to 30% in the next two-three years as the glut of housing and the bust in the housing market unravels: which fool would buy a home now when a 20% down-payment and the entire equity in such down-payment will be altogether wiped out by a fall in home prices in the next few years? Anyone buying today at the still stratospheric prices will destroy his/her home equity in short order. Since buyers are not fools - in spite of the NAR spin - they are sharply reducing home purchases unless they get huge discounts. It is also a lousy time to sell as there is a massive glut of housing - both new homes and existing homes - on sales and demand is now well below a glut that is becoming worse as the completion of high housing starts at the beginning of the year will be soon dumped in the markets. Thus, expect more "ghost towns", the expression used by SF Fed president Janet Yellen. The sellers are becoming so desperate that they are now relying on Divine Providence to help them sell their homes: as reported in dozens of press items, sales of statues of St. Joseph are skyrocketing; it is has been a long-time popular belief that burying a statue of St. Joseph in the basement of your home helps you sell your home when housing is in trouble. Those statues sales skyrocketed in the housing bust of the early 1990s and they are going through the roof again today.

Book Watch: State of Denial

2006-11-07T09:43:00.000-08:00

Bob Woodward's 3rd book on the Bush administration is a page-turner! Iraq is at the center of the book, and one can't help but walk away with the feeling that this is one heck of a dysfunctional administration. I strong recommend you skim through this book (go to your public library), to get a sense of how goverment is NOT suppose to work. Hearing anecdotes about how the Bush administration arrives at decisions is no substitue for reading this book.

Some highlights:

Prince Bandar (Saudi Ambassador to the U.S. from 1983-2005): In the first few chapters, Bandar is all over the place. I did not realize how close he is with Bush Sr., they are extremely close friends. He probably has more access to Bush Jr. than most members of the administration!

Condi Rice: Judging by media reports you think that Condi Rice is a star inside the administration, that she is one of the more competent managers. It turns out, a lot of respected Republicans in foreign policy circles regard her as weak and ineffective. Her main problem is that she is essentially a member of the Bush family: she spends weekends with and socializes with the President and his family. David Kay, best known for heading the Iraq Survey Group and acting as a weapons inspector in Iraq after the 2003 Invasion of Iraq, feels that pre-war intelligence was weak, and that Rice and NSC should have asked more questions:
"The dog that did not bark in the case of Iraq's WMD program, quite frankly in my view, is the National Security Council."

"... (Rice) could have stopped trying to be the best friend of the president and be the best adviser and realize she's got this screening function ..."

"(Rice) was probably the worst national security adviser in modern times since the office was created."

Richard Armitage (Colin Powell's best friend and Deputy Secretary of State): I would love a whole book just on this guy. He is extremely funny, and as Naval officer in Vietnam, he and Powell were the main proponents of diplomacy. Some quotes:
Referring to Cheny, Rumsfeld and Rice: "Their idea of diplomacy," Armitage said to Powell once, "is to say, 'Look f***er, you do what we want.'"

Prior to the Iraq invasion, Powell and Armitage had discussions about Bush, Cheney and the White House: "Don't they have moments of self-doubt?"

On the the tendency for people to stay too long in office and to think they are irreplaceable: "You got to remember when you remove your fist from a pail of water, there's no hole."

Jay Garner (retired United States Army general who was appointed in 2003 as Director of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance for Iraq following the 2003 invasion of Iraq but was soon replaced by L. Paul Bremer): Based on reading this book, the administration probably should have left Garner in place, as he seems to have skills that Bremer doesn't have: management skills, i.e., the ability to delegate; listening skills and humility; and as an ex-military person, a clear appreciation of and experience in providing infrastructure and logistics. Newt Gingrich on Bremer: "(he) is the largest single disaster in american foreign policy in modern times."

For the record, I opposed the Iraq invasion, and one of my main reasons for doing so, was hearing diplomats and foreign policy experts warning about the post-war chaos. The ability to listen seems to be in short supply in this administration.

China’s Low-Profit Growth Model

2006-11-06T09:06:00.000-08:00

From the Far Eastern Economic Review:

... At issue is not whether the profits of Chinese firms have grown, as the World Bank researchers suggest. No one disputes that. But a growing dwarf is still no giant. At issue is whether China allocates and uses capital efficiently enough so that it produces a return on capital at par or better than international markets. The question is: By international standards, how efficient is China in using its capital?

My own analysis of the same data used by the World Bank concludes that the return-on-equity numbers reported by it are significantly overstated because they do not net out such items as corporate income taxes. The World Bank does not dispute this. But it insists that Chinese firms are now making so much profit that undistributed profits or retained earnings finance more than half of their investments, whereas bank loans finance only one-third or as little as one-sixth. If this is true, it suggests that Chinese firms finance their investments with much less debt in proportion to equity on average than probably all their international peers, and therefore by implication they must have been more profitable. For evidence, the World Bank points to the increase in the proportion of corporate savings in China’s national savings, now accounting for more than 20% of GDP.

... As a macroeconomic concept, corporate savings consist of more than just undistributed profits. In addition, corporate savings include depreciation, amortization (both of which are treated as costs in any corporate income statement) and other things (including government subsidies). Depreciation alone is a big number. China’s growth is driven by fixed-asset investments which now represent more than 50% of GDP and still grow at 25% to 30% per year. As such, China’s fixed-asset base expands each year and so the amount of depreciation from such an asset base also increases. Nobody knows for sure how big the depreciation number is because China’s statistical authorities do not have complete data in this regard, but one can make some safe estimates. ... By this calculation, depreciation alone (11% of net asset value) is more than 1.2 times as large as undistributed profits (9% of net asset value) or at least 55% of corporate savings. Undistributed profits at most represent about 45% of corporate savings.

Therefore, if corporate savings represent 60% of corporate investments, undistributed profits account for no more than 27%, from a macroeconomic point of view. How remarkable a percentage is that? Not very.

... By now, we know that average ROE for Chinese industrial firms is not high by international standards. We have also established that undistributed profits do not finance more than half of corporate investments. Neither do corporate savings. The increase in net margin for Chinese industrial firms in the past seven years comes entirely from interest rate cuts. Banks have played the rich uncle, rescuing and subsidizing Chinese firms with huge amounts.

So are Chinese banks profitable on average in comparison with their international peers? Not at all. The past three years were the best ever for Chinese banks. Yet, their average net return on assets, at 0.4%, is the lowest in Asia. Even without taking into account the need for provisions for bad loans, they are still the least profitable among their Asian peers with their pre-tax, pre-provision profit return on asset of merely 1.1%.

... China has embarked on major banking reforms and meaningful progress has been made. But the economy’s growth continues to be driven by excessive liquidity, and so is costly and inefficient. Improving profitability, returns and efficiency remains the highest priority. While China is on the right track in her search for a cure, the last thing she needs is someone in a doctor’s white gown to come along to tell her she is in excellent health. Fortunately, the leadership knows better. The policy of the central bank to raise interest rates, mop up excess liquidity, curtail lending to overheated industries and generally increase the cost of capital is correct and necessary for sustained growth in the long term.

Neocons Confidence In the Administration

2006-11-04T11:03:00.000-08:00

Some of the biggest supporters of the war are profiled in this short article in Vanity Fair. Remember that a lot of what is happening in Iraq was predicted by career State Department officials, as well as members of the Clinton and Bush Sr. administrations. So while I welcome their change of heart, I still don't understand why they were so confident that Democracy can be transplanted so easily to Iraq. Money quotes:

(Richard) Perle goes so far as to say that, if he had his time over, he would not have advocated an invasion of Iraq: "I think if I had been delphic, and had seen where we are today, and people had said, 'Should we go into Iraq?,' I think now I probably would have said, 'No, let's consider other strategies for dealing with the thing that concerns us most, which is Saddam supplying weapons of mass destruction to terrorists.' … I don't say that because I no longer believe that Saddam had the capability to produce weapons of mass destruction, or that he was not in contact with terrorists. I believe those two premises were both correct. Could we have managed that threat by means other than a direct military intervention? Well, maybe we could have."

... David Frum, the former White House speechwriter who co-wrote Bush's 2002 State of the Union address that accused Iraq of being part of an "axis of evil," it now looks as if defeat may be inescapable, because "the insurgency has proven it can kill anyone who cooperates, and the United States and its friends have failed to prove that it can protect them." This situation, he says, must ultimately be blamed on "failure at the center"—starting with President Bush.

... Fearing that worse is still to come, (Kenneth) Adelman believes that neoconservatism itself—what he defines as "the idea of a tough foreign policy on behalf of morality, the idea of using our power for moral good in the world"—is dead, at least for a generation. After Iraq, he says, "it's not going to sell." And if he, too, had his time over, Adelman says, "I would write an article that would be skeptical over whether there would be a performance that would be good enough to implement our policy. The policy can be absolutely right, and noble, beneficial, but if you can't execute it, it's useless, just useless. I guess that's what I would have said: that Bush's arguments are absolutely right, but you know what, you just have to put them in the drawer marked can't do. And that's very different from let's go."

Election Links

2006-11-03T13:29:00.000-08:00

U of Iowa Futures Markets:

TradeSports

Lest people get over confident about the Democrats taking one or both houses of congress, remember Ohio in 2004:

Christopher Hitchens on Ohio's Odd numbers.
RFK Jr. and the 2004 Presidential elections.

New Resource Bank

2006-11-02T07:51:00.000-08:00

SF based, New Resource Bank:

... (is) a recently launched commercial bank based in San Francisco. NRB is one of a small number of community banks focusing on the needs of sustainably-minded businesses.

The bank's origins go back about two and a half years, when Peter Liu, the bank's founder and vice chairman, found himself among a group of individuals being asked by California Treasurer Phil Angelides to help implement the state's Green Wave initiative, which called on the state's two large public pension funds -- the California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS) and the California State Teachers' Retirement System (CalSTRS) -- to invest $1.5 billion in clean technologies and environmentally responsible companies.

... a developer of small local renewable energy projects might have trouble getting funding from conventional banks, or even local community banks. "They may understand real estate, but they don't understand that there are other things that can have cash flow, like energy projects," says Liu. "These can have a similar credit profile as real estate, so if a banker took the time to understand the security and soundness of the project, it's more likely to get financed than comparing it to land or a house or apartment." The same is true for producers of organic meat and produce, which cost more to produce but which garner higher prices in the marketplace. Bankers may miss the big picture -- seeing only the higher-cost side of the equation and basing their calculations accordingly.

... Time will tell, of course, but Liu and his colleagues are banking on the rising interest among consumers and businesses in products and services with green values. Banking in particular has been in need of some fresh ideas given the growing industry consolidation, with a handful of big banks dominating the scene and standardizing their services -- often leaving behind those needing tailor-made services.

New Resource Bank's official opening is November 14 (when the full complement of online banking services will debut), but last week at the Solar Power 2006 conference in San Jose, Calif., Liu announced the bank's first green financial product: a partnership with solar panel maker SunPower Corp. that will allow customers to more easily finance residential solar energy installations. (Robert Lorenzini, a co-founder of SunPower, is an investor in the bank.) Liu believes the customized home-equity lending, combined with tax credits, can make solar affordable to many California residents for whom it is currently out of reach.

Resveratrol: The Latest Anti-Aging Tool?

2006-11-01T11:10:00.000-08:00

From the Washington Post:

... To examine for the first time whether resveratrol could also extend longevity in mammals, Sinclair and his colleagues studied year-old mice, which are the equivalent of middle-aged humans. One third of the mice were fed a standard diet. Another third ate the equivalent of a junk-food diet -- one very high in calories with 60 percent of the calories coming from fat. The last third lived on the unhealthy diet combined with resveratrol.

After a year, the researchers found that both groups of mice that ate the junk food diet got fat, and those that did not get any resveratrol experienced a host of health problems, including the early signs of diabetes and heart disease. They tended to die prematurely.

But the mice that got resveratrol remained healthy and lived as long as the animals that ate a normal diet and stayed thin -- adding the equivalent of about 10 or 20 human years to their lifespan. Moreover, the hearts and livers of the animals getting resveratrol looked healthy, the activity of a host of key genes appeared normal and they showed some of the biological changes triggered by caloric restriction. They also appeared to have a better quality of life, retaining their activity levels and agility.

"It is really quite amazing," Sinclair said. "The mice were still fat but they looked just a healthy as the lean animals."

... "I'm usually a very cautious person," said Cynthia Kenyon of the University of California in San Francisco. "But I'm seriously thinking about taking resveratrol myself. It seems pretty wonderful."

"I actually told my mother she should take it," Helfand said. "I even went out and got her some."

Here is the Wikipedia entry. Now I know why I need to drink Red Wine regularly.

Botched Joke

2006-11-01T07:39:00.000-08:00

John Kerry botches a joke about President Bush, and Bush goes on the offensive. Josh Marshall breaks it down:

It's really a case study in the Republican outrage apparatus, one McCain's in on too now. What does President Bush have to apologize for? Let's see. Taking the country to war on the basis of what he knew were lies? Check. Distorting and lying about WMD intelligence to goad the country into war? Check. Having no plan for what to do in Iraq after Baghdad fell? Check. Lying about how badly things were going in Iraq because he coudln't face the truth and thus letting hundreds or thousands or American military personnel die? Check. Mmmm. Lying to the country about al Qaida being tied to Iraq, resulting in hundreds or thousands of American deaths? Check. Got any more?

Update: On Don Imus' show today, Kerry apologizes for the botched joke, and sets the record straight on who needs to apologize.

Where is OSHA When You Need It?

2006-10-31T07:00:00.000-08:00

Scary.

How Solar Cells Work

2006-10-30T07:04:00.000-08:00

A detailed introduction can be found here.

What's the matter with France?

2006-10-27T07:55:00.000-07:00

From the Economist:

... Why are the French so restless? The answer is threefold. First, their economy has lost ground. For example, France's GDP measured at current exchange rates has been overtaken by Britain's, which is now 5% bigger (even though the two countries' populations are much the same). Back in the late 1970s it was the other way round: the British economy was only three-quarters the size of the French one. Over the past 25 years, in terms of GDP per head at current exchange rates, the French have dropped from seventh place in the world to 17th. Even allowing for things France does well, such as health care and welfare, the 2005 United Nations Human Development Index ranked it 16th, down from eighth in 1990. The French feel the slippage keenly. Polls show that “loss of purchasing power” is one of their top concerns.

Second, France's heavily planned economy has reached its limits. In the past, the French dirigiste model, which relies on a strong centralised state in the pre-revolutionary tradition established by Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Louis XIV's finance minister, served the country well. It speeded up reconstruction after the second world war. It delivered the trente glorieuses, or 30 years of post-war prosperity. And it laid the ground for the rapid transformation of the economy into an industrial powerhouse.

Even today, elements of dirigiste planning have helped to set France up for the modern age. Its high-speed TGV train network reaches into new corners each year: to Strasbourg in 2007, from Lyon to Turin by 2018, with projects to extend lines to Bordeaux, Rennes and Perpignan. As Thierry Breton, the finance minister, points out, France's early decision to invest in nuclear energy, which accounts for 78% of its electricity production, has turned a country short of fossil fuels into a net electricity exporter.

Yet the planned society relies crucially on an intelligent and efficient state, and over the years the French version has become untenable: too many bureaucrats, supported by too many taxes, impose too many rules in too many overlapping organisations. Despite all this effort, there is little sign that the public sector in France is any more efficient than in other rich countries. French public spending accounts for 54% of GDP, compared with an OECD average of 41% (see chart 1). One in four French workers is employed by the public sector. Public debt amounts to 66% of GDP, compared with 42% in Britain, and over the past ten years has grown faster in France than in any other EU-15 country. The baby-boom generation is leaving behind a poisoned legacy: as the title of a recent book puts it, “Our Children Will Hate Us”.

Moreover, in such a hierarchical system people too often expect solutions to be provided from the top. For example, whereas Google was devised by two graduate students at Stanford University, a rival search engine with the unpronounceable name “Quaero” was ordered by the French government from, among others, two big French companies, Thomson and France Telecom. CNN was founded by Ted Turner, an American entrepreneur in Atlanta; a new French challenger to the cable television network, France 24, which is due to start broadcasting shortly, was invented by Mr Chirac and is financed with government money.

The problems have been building up for some time. Thirty years ago, Alain Peyrefitte predicted that the mal français—essentially, a bureaucratic mentality—would stifle creativity and innovation and entrench resistance to change. Another critic wrote in 1994 of a “France suffering from a more profound sickness” than anybody then imagined: a “heavy and inert” state machinery that, if unreformed, would “block the evolution of society”. The prescient author? Mr Chirac.

Even so, politicians have consistently failed to explain to the citizens why the country cannot afford to go on as before. This is the third source of French electoral dissatisfaction. Instead of making the case for change, successive politicians have preferred to blame, and thus to discredit, outside forces—usually Europe, America or globalisation. “The French political class has constructed a wall of lies against the globalised world,” comments Nicolas Baverez, author of “France in Freefall”. No wonder there is no consensus for reform.

GPL Version 3

2006-10-26T07:39:00.000-07:00

New article from Forbes Magazine. With Oracle now providing support for (RedHat) Linux, hopefully, Stallman compromises.

Identity Theft 2.0

2006-10-25T07:57:00.000-07:00

This stuff is freaky: Hacking into online trading accounts:

... The scams typically begin with a hacker obtaining customer passwords and user names, experts said. One way is by placing keystroke-monitoring software on any public computer in a library, hotel business center or airport. With the software, all keystrokes entered on the computer can be recorded and e-mailed anywhere in the world.

Experts said all hackers have to do is wait until anyone types in the Web address of E-Trade, Ameritrade or another online broker, and then watch the next several dozen keystrokes, which are likely to include someone's password and login name.

These emerging Internet stock schemes appear to be new versions of the widely used "pump-and-dump" e-mail scams, in which spammers send out mass e-mails containing bogus news alerts intended to manipulate stock prices.

Stark said perpetrators are breaking into customer accounts and buying shares of thinly traded, microcap securities, also known as penny stocks. The hacker gains access using the customer's user name and password, then liquidates that person's existing stock holdings and uses the proceeds to buy shares in the microcap. The goal, regulators said, is to boost the price of a stock the hacker has already bought at a lower price in another account. The hacker then liquidates the stock and wires the money either to an offshore account or through a series of straw men, or dummy corporations, Stark said. The straw man may not know he is participating in fraud; he may have been told he is helping, say, an offshore business.

The entire operation can take a matter of minutes, or at most, hours.

"The unwitting victim opens the account in the morning and finds he or she owns thousands of shares in a microcap company that they have never heard of," Stark said.

The Fire Next Time

2006-10-24T07:26:00.000-07:00

Set in Flathead Valley, Montana, The Fire Next Time is an extremely powerful documentary, which chronicles conflict in a small town. Things escalate when an ex-mortgage broker from Washington state, purchases and starts hosting a 3-hour daily, talk-radio program. The host goes after environmentalists (taunting them on the air as "Green Nazis"), and their names and addresses start getting repeated on the program.

It is a classic lumber town, whose economy is rapidly changing: mill and lumber jobs are giving way to service/retail and construction jobs. The wake-up call arrives in the form of the arrest of a local militia leader, and the discovery of a huge cache of weapons.

The environmentalists come across as quite reasonable in the film. Some of the locals on the other side, exhibited rage and anger, and some in the film, seemed utterly unable to participate in dialogue. It is a scary look at what happens when one side is incapable is engaging in any form of interaction. Sadly, the talk-radio program becomes a forum where inaccurate information and outright lies get repeated, and distrust escalates.

Actually this documentary reinforced my agreement with Nancy Pelosi's proclamation that if the Democrats regain control of the House, "impeachment is off the table". The Democrats need to show the country what programs they support, and what anti-corruption reforms they will put in place. Impeachment will be a major distraction and a media circus will ensue. Fox News and AM talk-radio will go after them. I'm convinced that their priority should be to show the country they can behave like adults, and hopefully solidify their majority in 2008.

Stay the Course

2006-10-23T14:58:00.000-07:00

Kos is right on the money:

You've got to love Republicans claiming that they were never for "stay the course". I mean, it takes some serious gumption to get up and lie so blatantly to people who know you are full of shit. But nope, they have no apparent sense of shame.

The funniest part of the whole mess is that "stay the course" was their own framing. It's their words. It's not like the Democrats outframed the GOP on this one. They outframed themselves.

Mr. Stewart notices it as well:

Remaking American Medicine

2006-10-23T07:46:00.000-07:00

Another great series from PBS.

Stem-Cell Research

2006-10-21T07:08:00.000-07:00

I'm proud California approved last year's $10B bond measure. Now it's up to the rest of the country, starting with Missouri:

Bill Moyers on Net Neutrality

2006-10-20T07:07:00.000-07:00

Excellent documentary, watch it online. One of the organizations I learned about is Teletruth, looking forward to learning more about them.

The Midterm Elections

2006-10-19T07:51:00.000-07:00

Charlie Cook is predicting the Democrats will do well next month. The futures markets are indicating that the House will go to the Democrats, while the Senate will still be controlled by the Republicans, although recent trends are looking good for Democrats as well.

Karl Rove and the White House believe that their Get-Out-The-Vote machine will save both houses for the Republicans. I'm more concerned about their ability to cleanse voter rolls and discourage minority and low-income voters.

I advise people to assume the worse, and work hard through election day. If you want to contribute a few hours as a phone volunteer, go here.

UPDATE: TradeSports has similar numbers.

UPDATE: The NY Times has an article on electronic voting and voter registration:

... As dozens of states are enforcing new voter registration laws and switching to paperless electronic voting systems, officials across the country are bracing for an Election Day with long lines and heightened confusion, followed by an increase in the number of contested results.

In Maryland, Mississippi and Pennsylvania, a shortage of technicians has vendors for new machines soliciting applications for technical support workers on job Web sites like Monster.com. Ms. Oakley, who is also facing a shortage, raided the computer science department at the University of California, Davis, hiring 60 graduate students as troubleshooters.

Arizona, California, Georgia, Indiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio and Pennsylvania are among the states considered most likely to experience difficulties, according to voting experts who have been tracking the technology and other election changes.

“We’ve got new laws, new technology, heightened partisanship and a growing involvement of lawyers in the voting process,” said Tova Wang, who studies elections for the Century Foundation, a nonpartisan research group. “We also have the greatest potential for problems in more places next month than in any voting season before.”

Election officials in many of the states are struggling with delays in the delivery of machines before the election as old-fashioned lever and punch-card machines are phased out. A chronic shortage of poll workers, many of them retirees uncomfortable with new technology, has worsened matters.

... “We’re expecting arguments at the polls in these states that will slow everything down and probably cause large numbers of legitimate voters to be turned away or to be forced to vote on provisional ballots,” said Barbara Burt, an elections reform director for Common Cause.

Meanwhile, votes in about half of the 45 most competitive Congressional races, including contests in Florida, Georgia and Indiana, will be cast on electronic machines that provide no independent means of verification.

“In a close race, a machine error in one precinct could leave the results in doubt and the losing candidates won’t be able to get a recount,” said Warren Stewart, policy director for VoteTrustUSA, an advocacy group that has criticized electronic voting.

Deborah L. Markowitz, president of the National Association of Secretaries of State, was less inclined to sound the alarm. She said that since it was not a presidential election year and many states had encouraged voting by mail, fewer people would turn up at the polls than in 2004.

PayPal Mafia

2006-10-18T07:15:00.000-07:00

Only in Silicon Valley, from the NY Times:

... Since 2002, when dozens of employees left PayPal after it was bought by eBay for $1.5 billion, those workers have gone on to start or join a new generation of Internet companies and other ventures. They have remained a tight-knit group, attending each other’s parties, helping to shape each other’s business plans, backing each other’s companies and recruiting each other for new projects.

Silicon Valley was largely built by networks of people and companies whose interlocking relationships help to spawn new start-ups. But the PayPal alumni have been unusually prolific, especially given the company’s modest size compared to Internet giants like Netscape, eBay and Yahoo.

“PayPal may have the highest ratio of individuals going off to start or finance new start-ups in the Valley,” said Scott Dettmer, a founding partner of Gunderson Dettmer, who has been providing legal advice to venture capitalists, start-ups and entrepreneurs since the 1980’s.

None of the PayPal network’s other offspring is anywhere near to matching the success of YouTube. But the PayPal alumni have started a number of promising ventures, mostly revolving around the Internet.

Among them is LinkedIn, the largest business-oriented social networking site, which was started by Reid Hoffman, a former PayPal executive vice president. It received funding from, among others, Peter Thiel, PayPal’s co-founder and former chief executive. Mr. Thiel himself started a hedge fund, Clarium Capital, which he said has grown from $11 million in assets to more than $2.3 billion in four years. He also runs a small venture firm with other PayPal alumni.

Another new Internet venture is Slide, a company started by Max Levchin, a PayPal co-founder, that makes it easy to publish, find and view slide shows on the Web. A handful of other start-ups are in earlier stages of development.

David O. Sacks, the former chief operating officer of PayPal, started a movie production company called Room 9 Entertainment. Its first film, “Thank You for Smoking,” a satire about the tobacco industry, has grossed more than $24 million at the box office. Mr. Thiel, Mr. Levchin and Elon Musk, another PayPal founder, all helped finance Room 9. Mr. Sacks said he had other film projects in the works, but he is also in the process of starting a new Internet company, for which Mr. Thiel provided some funding.

Mr. Musk started a company called Space Explorations Technology, or SpaceX, that is developing relatively low-cost rockets and is backed with $100 million of his own money.

YouTube was hatched by Chad Hurley, Steven Chen and Jawed Karim, all PayPal alumni, early last year. At a backyard barbecue last summer, Mr. Karim showed the site to a friend, Keith Rabois, a former PayPal executive who now works at LinkedIn. Mr. Rabois later told PayPal’s former chief financial officer, Roelof Botha, who is a partner at Sequoia Capital, the venture firm that has backed Apple, Google and Yahoo, among other big names. After meeting with YouTube’s founders, Mr. Botha got Sequoia to invest in it.

“What happened at PayPal is pretty unusual in that the PayPal alumni have ended up founding some pretty impressive teams and companies,” said Ron Conway, an “angel” or early-stage investor who has backed more than 400 start-ups.

...From the beginning, PayPal hired people whom its founders or other early employees already knew.

Mr. Thiel tapped his network of friends from Stanford, many of whom had worked at the Stanford Review, a libertarian magazine that Mr. Thiel co-founded in 1987. They populated PayPal’s business ranks. Mr. Levchin, for his part, hired engineers in large part from his alma mater, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, which had earlier been home to the team that developed the software that would be the basis for Netscape’s Web browser.

One of the first engineers Mr. Levchin hired at PayPal, for example, was Russel Simmons, who went on to become a co-founder of Yelp. Mr. Simmons, in turn, helped convince another engineer, Yu Pan, to join PayPal. Mr. Pan went on to become one of the first people hired at YouTube. Other University of Illinois recruits included Mr. Chen and Mr. Karim, two-thirds of YouTube’s founding troika. “YouTube is like a PayPal reunion,” Mr. Levchin said. A YouTube spokeswoman declined to make Mr. Hurley and Mr. Chen available for this story.

The long-standing bonds created an atmosphere of openness and trust, which not only helped PayPal succeed, but also made it easier for members of the network to embrace each other’s post-PayPal projects.

The founding of Yelp in the summer of 2004 is a prime example. It happened after a lunch celebrating Mr. Levchin’s 29th birthday at the Slanted Door, an upscale Vietnamese restaurant in San Francisco’s Ferry Building. There were about 16 people at the lunch, a majority of them ex-PayPal employees, Mr. Levchin said. At one point, the conversation turned to how hard it was to find, say, a good dentist. That got Mr. Simmons and Jeremy Stoppelman, PayPal’s former vice president of engineering, talking about a Web site where people could review local services.

On the walk back from the restaurant to their offices — an incubator for start-up companies run by Mr. Levchin — Mr. Stoppelman and Mr. Simmons discussed the idea further. “We were bubbling with excitement,” Mr. Stoppelman said. “As soon as we got back to the office, we pulled Max aside and pitched him the idea.” Mr. Levchin liked it, and the next day he agreed to back the project with $1 million.

Airbus and European Capitalism, Part II

2006-10-17T07:17:00.000-07:00

A few days ago, I linked to a discussion over at washingtonpost.com, on European vs. US capitalism. The discussion was hosted by Steve Pearlstein, who had just written about the problems facing Airbus.

Businessweek has also just published an article on Airbus which illustrates the problem with incessant meddling by politicians from several countries:

... Constant political meddling, it seems, is the price Airbus must pay for billions of dollars in low-interest government loans that have helped fuel its growth. Politicians lean on the company to spread work across its 16 European factories, sapping efficiency and increasing the risk of production glitches. "The fairy tale has turned into a nightmare that even the fiercest Euro-skeptics wouldn't have imagined possible," according to Eric Chaney, Morgan Stanley's chief European economist.

The $16 billion A380 project was a victim of that nightmare. The plane's mismatched wiring was produced by Airbus' Finkenwerder factory, a vast complex near the port of Hamburg that employs more than 10,000 people. In many respects, Finkenwerder would be the most logical site for the A380's final assembly line. Thanks to the plant's waterfront location, the plane's wings and fuselage -- too big for conventional land and air transport -- could have been delivered by ship directly to the factory door. Instead, political horse-trading led Airbus to put the assembly line in landlocked Toulouse, where the huge components have to be shipped on custom-built river barges and flatbed trucks. More than 100 miles of highway had to be widened and straightened so the trucks could get through.

SOMA FM

2006-10-16T07:05:00.000-07:00

SOMA FM is a listener supported , internet radio station, based in the Mission District of San Francisco. They are located in the same building as my partner's Art Studio.

Please check them out, they depend on financial support from listeners.

Housing Market Futures Contracts

2006-10-13T07:02:00.000-07:00

With prompting from Robert Shiller (the guy who put together this graph), the Chicago Mercantile Exchange has launched futures contracts covering 10 U.S. Metro Areas. Business Week has an article comparing the futures markets, with econometric analysis. Some people feel that there is not enough trading/liquidity, so the futures prices may be unreliable.

You can check out contract descriptions here.

S3 as a Backup Service

2006-10-13T06:58:00.000-07:00

Hmmmm, I wonder if I should start using S3 to backup all my home machines.

Book Watch: Let My People Go Surfing

2006-10-12T08:12:00.000-07:00

Yvon Chouinard, the founder of Patagonia, has written a book that I think every college student should read -- or, more appropriately, Business Schools should recommend. It is a look into the history of the company, and the continuing evolution of its philosophy.

The book is written in a casual style but is full of examples of what sets Patagonia apart: from their product development philosophy, sales, human resources, and environmental/social justice practices. I really think that M.B.A. students would benefit from the Patagonia perspective. While Green M.B.A. programs already exist, traditional M.B.A. students will learn Patagonia's approach does not hurt the bottom line. In fact intense customer loyalty always translates to higher profitability per customer. Chouinard recognizes that in order for a small company like Patagonia to influence corporate America, it needs to demonstrate that it's values and methods do not hurt profitability.

This book would make an excellent holiday present. If you think you know and understand what makes one of America's great companies work, think again! I for one learned a lot of cool things in the area of product development and sales. Buy this book and be surprised at how your company can benefit from some of Patagonia's methodologies.

Jeffrey Goldberg

2006-10-12T07:06:00.000-07:00

The former Middle East correspondent for the New Yorker, Goldberg was interviewed recently by Terry Gross. I like his humility and learned a lot about Israeli-Palestinian relations through this interview. I recommend it highly.

Europe vs. the U.S.

2006-10-11T11:52:00.000-07:00

Interesting chat on the strengths and weaknesses of both flavors of capitalism, in the context of the competition between Airbus and Boeing:

...Steven Pearlstein: Every system has its strengths and weaknesses, and in each place, the two are often inseparable parts of the package. You can't just take the best of our system and the best of theirs and put them together. But when you consider, overall, the competitiveness and dynamism of the two systems, the US is winning -- and the gap is getting wider. I think the evidence on this, much of it anecdotal, is unambiguous now. And the Europeans are now going to have to rejigger their system. Government ownership has largely given way to government interference, but it is still a drag on large, global companies. And you see it in the investment pattersn of European based global companies, which now invest disproportionately outside their region, in part because of the desire to have the freedom of action that they don't have when work is done in Europe. Its not the whole story, by any means. But it is an important cultural and political change that business people know has to happen -- that government officials know has to happen -- and yet they just can't let go.

...Flat wages: I've worked in Europe for years, France in particular. Even smart young professionals, with good education, are stuck in a lockstep income system. There's no way for the really hardworking, bright, and energetic people to reap any rewards from their contribution. And it's tough to be an entreprenuer there too. The French equivalent of the SBA is a joke. There's a significant internal brain drain from France & Germany into Ireland and the UK, where it's easier to set up a new business.

Steven Pearlstein: This is such an important point, and one Europeans don't want to listen to, because it offends their egalitarian sensibilities. If you think this is unimportant, look at what happened in Israel, another socialist paradise of the 1960s. Lots of people lived on kibbutz's then. Now, not so many. Why? Because gradually, in a society where people have choices, the most talented people left the "income averaging" kibbutz so they could enjoy the full economic benefits that come from being a high achiever. And gradually, the kibbutz's became unable to compete economically against free standing businesses in providing stuff for the market or even for their own residents.

Maybe its cruel to say some people are more valuable econoically than others. But its true, just as it is true that some are better at music, at sex, at drawing, at sports. Why is it so terrible to accept different "results" in economics but not in those other areas.

...Silver Spring, Md.: How can you say the U.S. is 'winning' regarding the economic competitiveness of the two systems. This strikes me as American chauvinism at its worst. First of all, stop comparing GDP and start comparing GDP per hour worked

If the U.S. is 'winning' regarding the economic competitveness of the two systems, why is that France is more productive per hour worked than the U.S.? This figure is far more relevant per capita GDP since Americans work more hours per week than Europeans.

Steven Pearlstein: France is not more productive per hour worked when you are comparing auto worker to auto worker, journalist to journalist, etc. The reason we have lower productivity per hour, in an overall statistical sense, is that we have many, many, many more low-skilled jobs in our official economy. These jobs just do not exist in France (babysitters, gardeners for middle class people, housekeepers for middle class people, baggers at grocery stores). The labor and minimum wage laws don't permit it. As a result, they have more unemployment but higher average wages. Its a tradeoff -- and one, by the way, that makes their economy less efficient and discourages economic growth.

George Bush: A Life In Pictures

2006-10-11T09:45:00.000-07:00

Jesus is ALWAYS at his side -- literally! From the creators of the Onion.

The Politics of Faith in America

2006-10-11T08:21:00.000-07:00

Ray Suarez (formerly of NPR, and now with PBS) gave a great talk on the role of Religion in American politics. It was really interesting to hear him put things in historical perspective. The religious right in this country has taken over the Republican party, to the point that "fiscal" conservatives must feel under siege.

You can download the mp3 of the talk here. The World Affairs Council is another great resource for your iPod!

Kill-A-Watt

2006-10-10T10:56:00.000-07:00

I want one of these.

Hardly Stricly Bluegrass

2006-10-10T06:44:00.000-07:00

Great write-up in the SF Chronicle. I agree, the crowd was massive. It was a challenge to go from stage to stage. The weather was perfect, and the music was awesome. Only in SF do you get to go to so many free events!

Actually, I think the organizers should charge a nominal fee (say $2), and either use it to fund a non-profit to continue to stage the event, or donate it to charity.

National Credit Ratings

2006-10-09T06:55:00.000-07:00

From Business Week:

... Standard & Poor's sovereign ratings are predictors of default risk. Essentially they measure the ability of the government to pay its debt on time. To come up with a sovereign rating, S&P looks at political risk, income and economic structure, growth prospects, fiscal balances, debt stocks, contingent fiscal risks, monetary policy, and external liquidity and external debt (debt owed to foreign creditors). At this point, 19 countries (out of 193) have S&P's highest sovereign rating of AAA, which means that the government "has an extremely strong capacity to meet its financial commitments."

Definitely worth going through the slideshow. Most of the countries on the list have relatively low population. In fact only the U.S. has more than 85M. But with the Republicans running up current account and trade deficits like crazy, how much longer will the U.S. have a AAA rating :-)

The House Corruption Scandal

2006-10-06T07:27:00.000-07:00

We urgently need a fresh start in Congress. I am even more convinced after watching this documentary from Bill Moyers:

It's a dizzying scope of perfidy and politics that boggles the imagination, and although Jack Abramoff and Tom DeLay have been brought down, the system remains as vulnerable as ever," says Bill Moyers. "The scale of corruption still coming to light dwarfs anything since Watergate. In one sense it's the age-old tale of greed, but greed encouraged now by the way our system works. Deep in the plea agreements of Jack Abramoff and his cronies is the admission that they conspired to use campaign contributions to bribe politicians; campaign finance is at the core of the corruption. They took great pains to cover their tracks, and they might have pulled it off except for a handful of honest people, and the work of some enterprising print reporters, Senate investigators, and the ethics team at the department of justice. Following the money in this story leads through a bizarre maze of cocktail parties, golf courses, private jets, four-star restaurants, sweatshops - and the aura of chandeliered rooms frequented by the high and mighty of Washington.

Please try to watch it online.

It's Your Data

2006-10-05T08:56:00.000-07:00

In the Web 2.0 world, user-generated data is crucial. But the user needs to have some control over her/his data. MoveMyData is an open-source project that allows you do just that:

Your content and data should be yours to manage and do with as you please. Your images, writing, tags, profile, blog entries, comments, testimonials, video, and music should be yours to download and move anyplace you want.

We will help ensure that no website ever holds your data hostage.

Electric-Solar Car Hits The Market

2006-10-04T08:25:00.000-07:00

From Business Week:

The Venturi Astrolab not only uses no fossil fuels but it can attain speeds of more than 70 mph.

It's not often we get lead stories on consecutive days from the same company (never before in fact) but French transportation futurists Venturi have done it again – this time with the first solar electric hybrid to be commercialised in the world. Named Astrolab (latin astro = star, labe = to take) because it takes its energy from the sun in order to move, the solar commuter is capable of working with very little energy (16 kW engine) and of recharging even when in motion, and does not need to be permanently exposed to the sun in order to move. The car's performance is remarkably close to that of a petrol-engined vehicle as it has a top speed of 120 kmh and a minimum range of 110 km. To attain this level of performance while using very little energy, the Astrolab has been designed like a Formula 1 car with an ultra-light carbon monocoque chassis serving as an oversized protection cell in the event of a collision and at the same time offering a large surface for the 3.6 square metres of photovoltaic cells. Its profile recalls the aqua-dynamic design of great racing yachts and Venturi draws the parallel between Astrolab and a sailboat : both advance silently while making best use of the elements and both offer sensations unlike any other. Its designer Sacha Lakic describes Astrolab as "a flying wing set on four wheels."Astoundingly, it's not just a show car - EUR92,000 will buy you one and the first vehicles are scheduled for delivery in January, 2008. Do be sure to see yesterday's equally remarkable story about the world's first energy-autonomous vehicle. Venturi, we salute you!

One of the many tricks involved in the Astrolab is the efficiency of the photovoltaic cells which offer an exceptional yield of 21%, as they are covered by a film composed of nano-prisms, enabling denser concentration of solar energy. Venturi is hoping for even higher yields in the years to come. The car uses liquid cooled NiMH Venturi NIV-7 batteries and enable it to be plugged into the electricity grid, making it the first electro-solar hybrid vehicle.

This is also the first vehicle that consumes no fossil resources in order to work (depending of course on where you live and how the electricity is made in your neck of the woods): the emissions of CO2 required for its construction will even be compensated for by Venturi's environmental actions.

Astrolab also opens up a new era as regards automobile architecture : light and high-profiled, it offers the rays of the sun 3.6 m2 of today's most sophisticated photovoltaic cells (for an overall vehicle length under 4 m).

Optimised to incorporate its solar cells, the Astrolab's design takes into account the effect of passengers' weight on the vehicle's dynamic behaviour. Very light when empty, the tandem architecture makes for perfect balance, whether the vehicle is occupied by one person or two.

East Asia and Mobile Technology

2006-10-03T08:01:00.000-07:00

South Korea, Japan, and the Philippines are where mobile technologies (i.e. cell phones) are really an essential part of the culture. From the Washington Post:

... In recent years, growing numbers of people in the Philippines, as well as in countries as diverse as Japan and Zambia, have begun using new features on their mobile phones to pay bills, buy goods and transfer cash to relatives in the same country.

But international money transfers by this method have been slower to flourish, in part because regulators are trying to assure this new channel won't be used to launder money. Tightening the monitoring of international cash flows has become a prime goal of U.S. authorities who are trying to prevent terrorist attacks.

The Philippines, noted for embracing cellphone innovations and heavily reliant on remittances, has plowed ahead on its own. For now, however, phone companies are limiting international transfers to relatively small amounts, such as $200.

Globe Telecom officials said Filipino workers in 17 countries, including the United States, can now use their phones to send money home. In the United States, they said, the service recently linked up with remittance centers in California, Nevada and Texas.

Clean Energy News

2006-10-03T07:37:00.000-07:00

The Monthly Newsletter from CleanEdge has a column on the new "Energy" companies:

... Who else could become an "energy company"? Almost anyone who makes metals, plastics, advanced materials, or coatings. Software companies, who may write the code that weaves the cacophony of energy producers into a harmonious system. Big-box retailers, whose spacious, flat roofs could collectively become solar farms for the surrounding community. And, by extension, big real estate developers -- of malls, warehouses, industrial parks, and other large complexes -- creating microgrids of solar, wind, geothermal, fuel cell, and other energy sources. Some of these players already are emerging, with many more still to come.

It may not be long before we're asking, "Who's not an energy company?"

But what happens to these new "Green Energy" initiatives as the price of oil continues to slump? The CS Monitor has an interesting discussion:

Green-energy stocks have pulled back in recent months. Are you worried?

Robinson: About a third of our portfolio is committed to that space. Obviously, with the stocks pulling back, almost directly correlated to the price of oil pulling back, our overall portfolio has declined a bit. But over the long haul, we think the trends are in place so it really makes a lot of sense to have a lot of exposure.

Becker: This pullback is probably an opportunity for long-term clean energy investors. Speculators have probably been driven out of the market.... But if you have a longer term horizon there's probably money to be made from here. The Department of Energy forecasts a gap of 14 terawatts of power globally between now and the year 2050. That's the equivalent of 14,000 1-gigawatt new energy plants. If you opened one a day, it would take 38 years to get there. So the problem is not going to be solved with nuclear and fossil fuels alone.

Build It Green

2006-10-02T06:49:00.000-07:00

Build It Green,

... a professional non-profit membership organization whose mission is to promote healthy, energy and resource-efficient buildings in California. Supported by a solid foundation of outreach and education, Build It Green connects consumers and building professionals with the tools and technical expertise they need to build quality green buildings.

Build it Green is featured in a great article about green construction, in the NY Times:

... “The consumers are far ahead of the contractors,” said Dan Taddei, director of education for the National Association of the Remodeling Industry, which represents 5,000 remodeling companies, most of which do not emphasize green building.

Although green projects make up only a small minority of renovations, he said, growing consumer interest, along with a lack of expertise among remodelers, spurred the association to start a pilot training program in green remodeling this fall. It plans to introduce a certification by spring.

While no one tracks the number of environmentally friendly remodeling projects, other groups also say they have seen a climb in interest. Build It Green, a nonprofit organization that provides free advice to homeowners in the San Francisco area, says inquiries have risen since 2003, to roughly 150 calls a month, from around 20.

“There’s been a significant uptick in the volume of people who are doing additions or remodels and want to know where to get green building materials or find architects or contractors,” said Brian Gitt, executive director of the group, based in Berkeley.

In the past three years, enrollment in Build It Green’s training course for architects and contractors has grown from 20 or 30 a session to 70, with a long waiting list.

Book Watch: The Shia Revival

2006-09-29T06:49:00.000-07:00

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

2006-09-28T07:05:00.000-07:00

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

2006-09-27T22:31:00.000-07:00

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.

2006-09-27T06:20:00.000-07:00

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

2006-09-27T06:10:00.000-07:00

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

2006-09-26T08:55:00.000-07:00

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

2006-09-26T08:44:00.000-07:00

Ray Ozzie tops the list.

Open Source Router

2006-09-25T20:16:00.000-07:00

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

GPL version 3

2006-09-25T17:24:00.000-07:00

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

The Philippines and Outsourcing

2006-09-24T08:59:00.000-07:00

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

2006-09-22T07:32:00.000-07:00

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

2006-09-21T10:06:00.000-07:00

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

2006-09-21T07:09:00.000-07:00

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

Macarthur Grants 2006

2006-09-19T20:16:00.000-07:00

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

Christian Zionists

2006-09-19T08:09:00.000-07:00

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?

2006-09-18T07:14:00.000-07:00

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

2006-09-15T08:06:00.000-07:00

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

2006-09-15T06:48:00.000-07:00

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

2006-09-13T08:52:00.000-07:00

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

2006-09-12T20:15:00.000-07:00

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

2006-09-11T10:31:00.000-07:00

This list of top google adwords is depressing!

Semiconductor Companies and Solar Energy

2006-09-11T10:16:00.000-07:00

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

2006-09-10T07:15:00.000-07:00

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

2006-09-09T06:57:00.000-07:00

I am loving this. Check it out!

Video Express

2006-09-08T11:51:00.000-07:00

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

Billboards

2006-09-07T09:03:00.000-07:00

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

2006-09-06T11:55:00.000-07:00

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

2006-09-06T06:57:00.000-07:00

From the SF Chronicle.

Waging a Living

2006-09-05T06:41:00.000-07:00

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

2006-09-01T17:11:00.000-07:00

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!

Housing Bubble

2006-08-30T09:56:00.000-07:00

Bob Shiller and Karl Case have an today's op-ed in the WSJ, which I have to go to the library to read. I thought the op-ed's were free? Check out the graph of American housing prices over the last 116 years. Scary stuff. Hat tip to Nouriel Roubini. The graph looks fairly stable and cyclical, with no long-running trends. That is until the start of the 83% rise in 1997. Did someone say irrational?