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June 30, 2005
check out 43 places
The smart boyz and girlz over at 43 things just keep coming up with new ways to slice and dice their community of interest. They have a beta version sliced by places here: 43 Places. The part I like the best is the indexing of Flickr photos by place. It seems to do a good job with the exception of a bunch of Buenos Aries photos in the Seattle section. It was really cool to flip through images of my own city taken by other people. It was even MORE fun to flip through images of cities where I may be traveling. These are not your typical sanitized press shots. These are just real people with digital cameras and camera phones. Way better.
Not much text there, but I expect that to change as people start annotating their entries more. A cool concept. Thanks Josh!
Posted by Martin at 4:03 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Send Big Stuff utility
I have been looking for an easy to use service for sending large files (>5mb). I may have found it: YouSendIt | Email large files quickly, securely, and easily!. It is basically a web site that uploads your file then sends the other person in e-mail a link to it to download. It looks like basically an HTML front-end to simple FTP. I like. Clean, simple, free! Why can't all software be like this?
Posted by Martin at 12:11 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 27, 2005
Simulation shows vulnerabilities of oil, a MUST READ
Check this out: Green Car Congress: Simulation Highlights Economic Vulnerabilities of Oil Dependency. This was a bipartisan effort in a "what if" scenario around 3.5M barrels of supply leaving the market through whatever means (terrorist attacks, political unrest, weather, etc.). In my mind there is a 100% chance of that in the next 5 years. What would be the effect on US?
1. Gasoline prices of $5.74 a gallon
2. Global oil price of $161 per barrel
3. Heating oil prices of $5.14 per gallon
4. Fall of gross domestic product for two consecutive quarters.
5. Drop in consumer confidence by 30 %
6. Spike in the consumer price index to 12.6 percent.
7. Decline of S&P 500 by 28%.
And on and on....
Basically world economic meltdown. And you wonder why I am moving my investment focus to alternative energy from software?
Posted by Martin at 1:39 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 26, 2005
Book Review: Jonathan Kellerman: Therapy
Finished this on a plane trip back east a couple weeks ago. When my brain gets full of business books, I turn to these page turner detective novels. Well Novel is a stretch, but you know what I mean. This one was good, an easy and engaging read, but not really that memorable. Set in LA and the main culprit being a psychoparist, I was hoping to get some insight into those two worlds that I didn't have before. I didn't get anything. No new parts of LA. No new tricky things about therapy. Even though these kind of books are all fiction, one thing I like is getting some kind of glimpse inside something I don't get every day. Therapy didn't deliver that so it gets a 2 of 5 stars.
Posted by Martin at 9:21 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
The new HDV video camera to lust for
This week: SONY UNVEILS WORLD'S SMALLEST AND LIGHTEST HD CONSUMER CAMCORDER. Cool 1080i native. I am placing my order. Sony HDV
Posted by Martin at 8:23 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 25, 2005
Review: The Case For Democracy, Natan Sharansky
Just finished this book (The Case For Democracy: The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny and Terror
Sharansky spends allot of time making his point by recounting how the Soviet Union was brought down through the Helsinki accords and how the Israel/Palestine conflict is NOT being resolved because the Oslo accords take fundamentally the wrong approach. Natan effectively makes the case that accommodation of strongmen who repress the freedoms of their people NEVER works to curtail the ambitions of a fear society, although that is usually the first tool in the State Department's belt. There is a deeply embedded assumption in the State Department that accommodation of a strong-man that "we can work with " is better than allowing the messy process of democracy to happen with unknown results. That is why America has coddled dictators for so long. Bush is changing that. And that is a good thing for the world and the people ruled by those dictators. detente was a policy of appeasement of the Soviet Union. It only allowed them a breather from outside pressure to get stronger on their internal controls. We didn't change anything by empowering the dictator. Only when in Helsinki we tied our support of the regime to their internal treatment of their OWN PEOPLE was the regime forced into a policy of Glasnost (openness) that eventually exposed the emperor as having no clothes.
Sharansky puts forward a pretty compelling case for how the whole dissent thing can (and has in the the Soviet Union and across the former communist world) allowed fear societies to transform to free societies. In a society of fear there are three kinds of people: True believers, doublethinkers and dissidents. The true believers are the hard core ones who started the regime and maybe really believed in its goals at the outset. But in every regime (religious, communist, etc.) which tries to impose it's will on the people (even if it came to power through a "popular uprising") and does not tolerate dissent, they will have to resort to ever more draconian methods of controlling the people over time. So the cost of dissent goes up. The level of open public dissent can be measured directly by the cost of open public dissent. Under Stalin and Sadam, the price of ANY dissent was DEATH. The media and all public institutions are controlled by the regime, so information flow is limited. From the outside it can look like there is no dissent. So are the people really happy? Should democracies ignore what is happening because there is no clear sign of dissent? Where does the dissent go when the price is very high? Into the doublethinkers. These are the VAST majority of a fear society who publicly tow the regime's line, but privately want freedom. Under Sadam when reporters did "man on the street" interviews they never got any complaints. Neither did you get those under the Taliban or former Soviet Union. I bet if you did such interviews in North Korea today you wouldn't find much dissent. The price is too high. The people are expressing double think. The cost of dissent in the most extreme fear societies CAN be brought down by external pressure. The Helsinki accords forced the Soviets to stop killing dissidents and merely imprison them on trumped up charges in show trials. International organizations monitored the dissidents and reported on their treatment. The spotlight was on. More people dissented. More cruelty was exposed, more freedom of expression resulted (supported by outside) since what the regime wanted (western legitimacy, technology transfer, support) was tied to their treatment of their dissidents. In this scenario, the doublethinkers, the VAST majority of the people, sit on the sidelines until it seems safe to choose a side. They invariably choose the side of freedom, usually the dissidents. Down goes the Soviet Union.
Now Sharansky is not a Bush apologists, because I bet he would not approve of the military tactics of causing regime change in Iraq, although I know he agrees with the goal which is a free Iraq society that respects all human rights. Only societies that respect the rights of their own people can be expected to respect the rights of their neighbors. This leads to the Palestinian problem. The Oslo accords basically say make the despot, unellected Arafat powerful and you will have peace. It is detente all over again. Yet Arafat has used his power not to help the Palestinian people, but to build a society of fear and hate. The PLO media daily call for "a million martyrs" against Israel, the schools teach that Israel has no right to exist, the PLO controls all the money and aide coming in and only funnels it to those that agree with it, dissent is not allowed. Sharansky argues that a policy which tied support for the Palestinian state with the ending of their culture of fear and hate would actually lead to peace. I tend to agree. Israel is the external enemy that the PLO regime has used as the excuse for their repressive command and control tactics. When Arafat died, he personally was a BILLIONAIRE while his people live in squalid camps. He built a strong-man regime that feed hate and terror against the US and Israel. This will not be dismantled over night. Yet I have got to believe that the majority of Palestinians under Arafat were doublethinkers. They couldn't be true believers wanting to live in the poverty imposed by a terrorist only interested in self-preservation. It will be interesting to see where it goes now.
Here are my favorite quotes from the book. They mostly ring true to me. How bout you?
It is one thing to topple the Taliban and Sadam and install new strongmen in their place. It is quite another to replace those brutal tyrannies with free societies. For this, there are fewer precedents. (which is exactly why it is hard, but the only road to true peace)
Naturally, those who think that terror is largely unrelated to nondemocratic rule will not be convinced that the War on Terror can be won with the advance of liberal democratic values. They might argue instead of waging war on poverty or redressing the grievances that ostensibly drive terrorist to commit their savagery. (sound like a political party in America? This is simply wrong. Non-democratic rulers (of countries or Al Queda) fermenting hate against external enemies are the cause of terror and they must be dealt with directly)
Freedom House reports "Recent history shows that Islam is not inherently incompatible with democratic values. Indeed, if we take into account the large Muslim populations of such countries as India, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Nigeria, Turkey and the Islamic population of North America and Western Europe, the majority of the world's Muslims live under democratically constituted governments."
Only when the basic institutions that protect a free society are firmly in place - such as a free press, the rule of law, independent courts, political parties - can free elections be held. (hey don't expect elections a couple months after toppling a despot to be true freedom).
..to stay in power, nondemocratic leaders invariably build and maintain fear societies.
Dictators do not depend on their people; their people depend on them.
nondemocratic regimes stay in power by controlling their populations. This control invariably requires an increasing amount of repression. To justify this repression and maintain internal stability, external enemies must be manufactured. The result is that while the mechanics of democracy make democracies inherently peaceful, the mechanics of tyranny make nondemocracies inherently belligerent.
Twenty years later, the KGB has disappeared, the Soviet Union has disintegrated, global communism has collapsed, over one million Jews have left the big prison called the USSR, and hundreds of millions of people are free. One would think that no more proof was needed of the power of freedom to change the world. Just as they were wrong a generation ago about Russia, and two generations ago about Japan and Germany, the skeptics are wrong today.
The formula that triggered democratic revolution in the Soviet Union had three components: People inside who yearned to be free, leaders outside who believed they could be, and policies that linked the free world's relations with the USSR to the Soviet regime's treatment of its own people
...the extent of dissent in a society...is largely a function of price.
...only by ending the Palestinians' fear society will it be possible to end Palestinian suffering.
We must also not wait for the support of international organizations. Many of the countries that wield influence in these organizations are nondemocratic regimes. Surely, we cannot rely on those who deny freedom to their own people to support efforts to expand freedom around the world.
Just as the institution of slavery has been all but wiped off the face of the earth, so too can government tyranny become a thing of the past.
Summary: A compelling look at a very current issue. This IS about world peace. Peace only comes through freedom. If you look at what has happened in the former communist countries, you know that it can happen in the mid east. I rate this 4 of 5 only because it is a bit long-winded to get the point across. But the point and perspective is one everyone would do well to understand.
Posted by Martin at 9:07 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 21, 2005
New Clean Technology blog
Just ran across this today: Cleantech Investing. Rob seems to be doing a good job covering the sector.
Posted by Martin at 4:36 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Oil flirts with $60 per barrel
Unbelievable. Who would have thunk just a month ago when $50 seemed like the end of the world. Now we are playing with $60. It will still take a few weeks for this to be reflected in the summer driving numbers at the pump, but I expect diesel prices to break through the $3/gallon price within two months. This is BAD BAD BAD for the US economy. And we need more venture capitalist investing in solving this problem. I am.
Interesting snippet from Set us Free news letter today:
June 21, 2005 Update to friends
Going up. Oil prices broke another record this week climbing to $59 per barrel. Who would believe some months ago that we'd be edging the $60 mark. At such a price level the U.S. sends $650 million overseas per day, every day! "Our dependence on foreign energy is like a foreign tax on the American Dream - the tax our citizens pay every day in higher gas prices, higher cost to heat and cool their homes - a tax on jobs," said President Bush recently. "Worst of all, it's a tax increasing every year." No game. This tax also endangers America's global posture. Henry Kissinger, former U.S. secretary of state, warned that the global battle for control of energy resources could become the modern equivalent of the 19th century "great game" the conflict between the UK and Tsarist Russia for supremacy in central Asia. "The amount of energy is finite, up to now in relation to demand, and competition for access to energy can become the life and death for many societies. It would be ironic if the direction of pipelines and locations become the modern equivalent of the colonial disputes of the 19th century," he said. Getting louder. Another voice that joined the call for action on foreign oil dependence is the Committee on the Present Danger. The Committee is an international, non-partisan organization dedicated to protecting and expanding democracy by winning the global war against terrorism and the movements and ideologies that drive it. The Committee supports policies that employ a variety of means--military, economic, political, social--to achieve this goal. Among the members of the Committee are Senator Jon Kyl, Senator Joseph Lieberman, Steve Forbes, Newt Gingrich, Jack Kemp, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Elie Wiesel, Dov Zakheim and Vaclav Havel. The Committee's Co-chairmen former Secretary of State George Shultz and former CIA Director James Woolsey co-authored an "Oil and Security" paper which proposes six ways to reduce dependency on petroleum. The authors spell out the risks of petroleum dependency, particularly vulnerability of the petroleum infrastructure on the Middle East to terrorist attack. They agree with many other experts that a single well-designed attack there could send oil to well over $100 a barrel and devastate the world's economy.
Jim Woolsey, holding a bumper sticker that reads "bin Laden hates this car," with Senator Harry Reid.Shultz and Woolsey make the case for two types of alternative fuel, cellulosic ethanol and biodiesel derived from various waste streams. They cite the fuel efficiency of hybrid gasoline-electric vehicles and "modern, clean" diesels, and they urge the use of manufactured carbon composites in on-road vehicle construction that are now used in aircraft and racing cars. They also emphasize plug-in hybrid vehicles, cars that combine an internal combustion engine and liquid fuel tank (so they have the full range of a "standard" car) with a battery that can be optionally plugged in and charged, so that most of the day's driving can be done on electricity. Since less than 3% of U.S. electricity is generated from oil, that faciliates a shift from imported oil to the domestic energy resources the U.S. and other big consumers like China and India have in abundance. Plug-in hybrids would be charged at home overnight, a time when electricity is in low demand and thus inexpensive.
Posted by Martin at 4:26 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 17, 2005
Comments at SNS from Robert Hormats, Vice Chairman of Goldman Sachs
Robert Hormats will (hopefully) one day be Treasury Secretary. At a recent FIRE conference, he pointed to four imbalances that threaten the world economies over the next 5 years. One of the most interesting to me was the Energy Imbalance. I have reprinted his comments here. Hormats is exactly whare I am. Too much money was spent on technology in the 90s and basically zero on innnovation in energy. We need to invest again in energy technology.
Energy Imbalance
The third big imbalance is the energy imbalance. That essentially is a result of the fact that energy, and the "old economy" in general, was not seen as a very attractive place to invest in the 1990s. Very little new investment in this country went into energy. Very little new investment in the world went into energy, for that matter. Because technology was seen as producing high rates of return, that was the most attractive place to invest.
As a result of this, when the Chinese economy started growing, and the Indian economy started growing, and the American economy and others resumed growth, in the early part of this decade, there was simply insufficient capacity to provide the energy required to service that growth. Today, we don't have shortages like we did in 1993-94, or 1980 and '81, but we do have very tight capacity. Demand is pushing right up against the capacity of the Saudis and other countries to produce oil. That is why the price is so high.
In addition, there's a risk factor, in that you have any number of countries that produce oil and sell it on the world market who are vulnerable to political disruption. Iraq is a case in point. In Saudi Arabia there have been acts of terrorism. Venezuela is run by a very unpredictable person. Nigeria is occasionally subject to internal instability. And the potential for terrorism against oil facilities around the world is a serious issue. As a result of this, we're going to have to go through a period of transition, to where there's more production: perhaps a new Alaskan pipeline, perhaps a pipeline through Western Canada. The Russians are now increasing their production so they can supply more gas and oil to Western Europe and to Japan.
We're seeing some, but not very much, conversation as a result of higher prices. People do tend to be shifting in this country from SUVs to more efficient autos or hybrids, but it's a very, very slow process, and we're going to be vulnerable to disruptions in the supply of oil for some time to come.
In the United States, oil is largely a transportation fuel. We don't use very much oil for industrial purposes. We use gas, we use coal, we use other products, but not so much oil. It's a transportation fuel. And unless we're able to come up with much more efficient means of utilizing oil in our cars, we're still going to be using a lot of oil per capita. It's much, much less than it was 20 years ago. We use oil much more efficiently - we use energy in general much more efficiently, in this economy, than we did 20 years ago.
But what tends to happen is it goes in cycles. When the price goes up, we become more efficient. When the price goes down, we become less efficient: we buy bigger cars, we buy gas guzzlers. Then the price goes up again, and we have to in effect shift the auto fleet from less-efficient to more-efficient cars. So it takes time. We will have a price response, we will have a conservation response, we will have a production response, here and in other parts of the world. But it's a slow process, and while that adjustment is taking place, we're very vulnerable to disruptions in supply as a result of terrorism or other factors.
The other part of the adjustment problem is that building new capacity is very expensive. People say, "There's plenty of oil; there's plenty of oil in the ground." In fact, there is plenty of oil in the ground, but much of it is very distant from the places where the oil will be used. And also getting it out of where it is now, to the ports and to the gas pump, is expensive.
I'll give you one example to give you some sense of how the numbers have changed. There's this notion of building a pipeline from central Siberia to the far eastern Russian coast, to a port called Nakhodka. Five years ago, it was going to cost something on the order of $5 billion to build that pipeline. Today, given the price of steel, given the shortage of workers, it's $12 billion - that's the estimate. So if you take just the very cost of building these big oil projects, and then you look at the political risk... There's plenty of oil in the western desert of Iraq. Who's going to go in there? Which company is going to go put its people in there, subject them to acts of terrorism? Very few people.
The Saudis are in fact increasing their production; they've more than doubled their rig count. But the Saudis can't provide all of it. You need to have oil in other parts of the world, more diversification, and there are political risks, there are geological risks - and of course the cost structure, as I say, is much more prohibitive than it was several years ago.
So there is an adjustment taking place. It's going to continue to take place. We will, over a period of time, develop a better balance between supply and demand for oil, but while that's occurring, the vulnerabilities are very significant and troublesome.
Posted by Martin at 6:29 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 12, 2005
Trying MyBlogLog
The Blogsphere is GREAT! Anyone can write any little thing that could be useful and market it very easilly. Just e-mail people and ask them to use it. That is how I got to know about: MyBlogLog. Eric sent me this little note:
Martin --
I was hoping I could interest you in trying out MyBlogLog, a service which tracks the links that people click on to *leave* your blog. With MyBlogLog, you would know how many people you sent this week to the oilfacts pdf.
Registration and implementation is extremely quick -- five textboxes (Blog name, URL, email, password with
confirmation) and then a single line of javascript to embed in your blog template. Republish and you're immediately tracking. Under 30 seconds from start to finish.
I look forward to hearing your thoughts on MyBlogLog.
We're constantly looking for ways to improve the service for our users. Please contact me if you have any questions.
Cheers!
Eric
So of course I had 30 seconds. Here is what I found:
1. I love the simple interface. Five fields and you get the javascript to plug in. I think I did the whole thing in 20 seconds.
2. The Top Links feature that puts your top links out of your site into a side bar looks cool, but there is probably some delay in the server. I have 5 links out when I go to the mybloglog.com site, but TopLinks Javascript doesn't display any. I will give it a while.
3. I already have SiteMeter and have been happy with it, but it is WAY too much information. They could do this, but don't.
4. I like clean and simple little utilities that are 100% web services. Have no idea how Eric plans to make money (well he does try to sell me a "pro" version), but I like the free little utility for now.
Thanks Eric!
Posted by Martin at 5:33 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
Farting around with Text Pattern
I saw that 43things uses this for their blog. They are smart guys: Textpattern I am going to give it a try. So far, installed the code on the server, a snap. It was a bit tricky to find the main admin page. It is index.php in the textpattern subdirectory. There is also an index.php in the main site directory which is confusing. Not excited to replicate all the formatting work I have done. But I think this one will let you skip around in sections much easier. I need to replace the hard coded site for my foundation.
Posted by Martin at 12:17 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 11, 2005
Three weeks with my RocketChip
So I am driving my new Beetle with the RocketChip stage 3 tuning for about three weeks now. Now the Beetle comes standard from teh factory with 100hp. Stage 3 puts your boost up to 20psi, adds 55hp and 90ftlbs. Yea, you read right, a 55% increase in HP. And all that extra torque on such a light car. I haven't received my other "upgrades" from TVA yet, so the car isn't finished. Took it over to the VW dealer to get my plates friday. I tossed the salesman the keys. He came back five minutes later with a big grin on his face and said "are you kidding me?". He has never had so much fun in a Beetle in his life. Neither have I. I tried driving it without traction control and the tires spin totally out of control. Remember this is a front wheel drive diesel! Jeff over at RocketChip said that I shouldn't punch it with the wheels turned more than 25 degrees because I might rip my CV joints off. Yea, that is the one I want! I recommend it for everyone!
Posted by Martin at 9:02 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 10, 2005
Great set of recent oil reduction articles
Breaking That Dirty Oil Habit An unlikely alliance of hawks, doves and greens has a plan to help america guzzle less gas. Could it work?
An excellent roundup of progress with plug-in or gas-optional hybrids, biofuels and cellulose ethanol -- by all means forward the article or this message. It builds on the March Newsweek piece, "Imagine, 500 mile per gallon vehicles" by Fareed Zakharia
http://autos.groups.yahoo.com/group/calcars-news/message/2
The TIME article appeared in the June 13, 2005 issue sent to subscribers; it's not in newsstand copies.
Now you view or download a scanned, printable color 3MB version of the entire article at http://www.calcars.org/Time-OilHabitJuly05.pdf
We hope to have a four-page flyer available (minus full-page photos of former CIA Chief James Woolsey in his Prius and an ethanol "field of dreams")
The original article is found online at
http://www.time.com/time/insidebiz/article/0,9171,1069470,00.html
The text version, not including photos, charts, and a long sidebar on cellulose ethanol technology, is at
http://autos.groups.yahoo.com/group/calcars-news/message/61
Posted by Martin at 2:04 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 9, 2005
Apple's move to Intel affects Freescale and maybe NPUs
As with most of the industry, I was quite surprised to hear that Apple was going to dump Power PC and move to Intel. It must have been a hard thing for their ego to swallow, but in the end the superior economics of the X86 platform were just too compelling. Apple is more clearly turning into an OS company now. Out with the proprietary hardware. Apple OSX is basically Unix with a better UI. So would you buy Windows or Apple on an Intel platform? Hummm.
An interesting thing to note is what the loss of Apple as the last major customer of the Power PC platform will do to further investments on that chip line. It can't be good. Here is Linley's take.
===Apple Decision Impacts Freescale, IBM
-------------------------------------------
Apple's decision this week to move its Macintosh computers from PowerPC to
x86 in 2006 will impact Freescale and IBM to a modest extent, but it will not do significant harm to their embedded-processor strategies. We estimate Freescale's revenue from Apple was about $150 million in 2004, but the impact goes beyond this revenue; without Apple as a customer, the company is unlikely to continue developing new products in its MPC744x line of standalone processors. We believe this product line generates another $50 million or more in annual revenue from customers other than Apple.
Fortunately, Freescale no longer uses the CPUs from its 744x line in its most of its popular PowerQuicc products. The e600 (G4) CPU from the 744x dissipates too much power for most embedded applications, so Freescale developed the e500, which delivers slightly less performance but uses much less power, for PowerQuicc. Without Apples funding, we expect Freescale to focus on processors that provide a balance between performance and power dissipation rather than very high-performance products. We also expect Freescale to redirect development of the e700, a 64-bit PowerPC CPU intended to compete with IBMs G5 CPU, to better meet the demands of the embedded market, which is likely to further delay the project.
With Freescale unable to deliver a G5-class product in 2005, Apple has been forced to rely on IBM, but that company has become less and less interested in developing standard products. Over the past two years, IBM has sold its network processor, switch fabric, TCAM, and integrated PowerPC products, leaving only the standalone processors that it sells to Apple and a few others. But apparently even the estimated $250 million that IBM received from Apple in 2004 was not enough to keep Big Blue's attention. Apple's decision should allow IBM to drop the final vestiges of its standard-product business, letting it focus entirely on video-game manufacturers and its other large ASIC customers. By the way, anyone who believes IBM will be selling Cell processors to hundreds of customers in a few years just isn't paying attention. --LG
Posted by Martin at 1:54 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
What is made from a barell of crude oil?
This PDF oilfacts.pdf is a bit of industry puffery, but it does one thing well. Tell you how much of each product comes out of a barrel of crude oil. The industry has become masters of wringing out every penny of value from that barrel. Oh, and a barrel is 42 gallons. Who knew?
Posted by Martin at 11:53 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 8, 2005
two important R&D projects ongoing about energy independence
Role of Biomass in America's Energy Future
and Top Value Added Chemicals from Biomass (DOE, NREL and PNNL)
Posted by Martin at 6:18 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
bedtime reading
Just read NRDC.Growing.Energy.Final.3.pdf
a report on how biofuels can help end america's oil dependence. Very interesting reading focusing on ethanol and biodiesel if you have a some time.
Posted by Martin at 6:06 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack