Culture
The First Rule of Holes
California is quickly learning the first rule of holes: when you find yourself at the bottom of one, stop digging. Banks, insurance companies, and pension funds buy government bonds because they are a very safe investment. Suppose they have to choose between the bonds of: a) Mexico. The world's newest narco-state, so beloved by its citizens [...]
The Hamilton Mixtape: "Cause I'm the damned genius that shot him"
One of the cool things about being President is that talented people of all sorts are happy to drop by and perform for you. Last May, the White House sponsored "Poetry, Music, and Spoken Word", an opportunity to let people most of us have never heard of get their 15 minutes. In the Heights [...]
"Dream bicycles that change and grow"
One of my favorite cycling blogs, Eco Velo, ran this photo some time back. I am slightly obsessed with bicycles and business, so I noticed not just four sweet rides, but a nice illustration about how competition and business innovation are changing even the bike business. THE ROMANCE OF BICYCLES Most bikes sold in most [...]
The Peter Pandemic
Three days ago, I felt like crap. Sudden onset aches, chills, and nausea with a 100 degree plus fever. I didn't go home because I did not want to expose my family to Mexican pig flu. I had not been south of the border recently, but plenty of people around here have been, so I [...]
….I'm half crazy, all for the love of you…
What is it about bicycles that provoke frenzied human creativity? Or at least goofiness? For reasons hard to fathom, this vital question appears to have been neglected by the blog o'sphere. Thus, as my contribution to Earth Day, it is time for a roundup of bikes peculiar, ingenious, or just plain strange. Let the velorution [...]
Reinventing and Rediscovering Music
The traditional music industry is dead and likely to be more studied than missed. Every label is in trouble, mainly because CD sales decline every year, with 2009 likely to be a free fall. Every dedicated music retail chain is out of business. Only the #1 retailer matters – Apple’s iTunes. The rest, including Walmart [...]
Prop 8: The Musical: "It's an Obamanation".
Begging for redemption after a series of embarrassing movie performances, Jack Black is here resurrected as Jesus Christ in this vaudeville send-up of California’s Proposition Eight. He is joined by Neil Patrick Harris, Margaret Cho, John C. Reilly, Maya Rudolph and a lot of other people who I did not realize could sing. The play [...]
For Fun….
I am a secret Laird Hamilton fan. Think he may be the best big wave surfer ever. He invented (some say co-invented) tow-in surfing. This is nothing like the sport of my youth — but a LOT like the fantasies of my youth. This is pretty amazing…
A Brilliant Flashback
Saturday night I took a trip back to the 1970s and found two groups of people. One remains unchanged — seemingly frozen in time. Another group has taken what they learned in the seventies and used it to change the world. The occasion was a benefit concert for the Seva Foundation at Oakland’s beautiful Paramount [...]
The Man Who Loves Scholars
I am a huge fan of Simon Winchester — a peripatetic Brit who writes brilliantly about geology, lexicography, and sinology. At his best, Winchester turns science into biography by demonstrating how an obscure scholar shaped our view of the world. Winchester majored in geology at Oxford and worked in the field for many years before [...]
Gremmies, Hodads, and Woodies
It was a warm day like this some years back that a song first stopped me cold. Walking home from sixth grade, I shared a transistor radio with a friend. When our song came on, which in the spring of 1963 was often, we stopped, put down our books, and sang to the avocado trees [...]
Economics and Politics as Choice Architecture
Some years back, I passed through Schiphol in Amsterdam and realized why some designers consider it the world’s finest airport. Its layout is logical and efficient, public internet terminals are numerous and free, and the stores, including a full 24/7 supermarket, are so attractive that locals come to the airport to shop. But it was [...]
Media Wants to Be Digital, Downloadable, and Free
Mooreâs Law famously describes an important trend in computer processing power: the number of transistors that can be inexpensively placed on an integrated circuit increases exponentially. Specifically, Intel founder Gordon Moore observed that chip density doubles about every two years. Thanks to Mooreâs Law, computer processing is now free for most intents and purposes. Metcalfeâs [...]
Coldest Winter Ever: Climate or Weather?
Four research keep track of global warming and other climate changes: the UK’s Hadley Centre and Royal Statistical Society along with NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies and the University of Alabama at Huntsville. All four centers recently updated their data, which confirms that we just had the largest 12 month change in weather that [...]
Angels and Angles: Trompes Triumph
It seemed like a low-key Oscar night, although I haven’t watched in many years. Best joke: the John Stuart gag on Barack Obama’s politically challenging name ("His middle name is the last name of Iraq’s former tyrant and his last name rhymes with Osama."), recalling the presidential candidate "Gaydolf Titler". Best moment: French actress Marie [...]
The Big Picture
God’s eye view of Southern California, courtesy of the European Space Agency. It does not begin to tell the story of the anxiety, confusion, frustration, and loss that more than a half million people evacuees feel tonight. My Mom evacuated the Witch Canyon fire and my brother evacuated Slide, some 60 miles away. Her house [...]
"Don't tell me that this is the best America can do."
Last year I got in touch with a friend who had backed Alibris in its very early days. At the time he invested, he warned me that he could be "pathologically intense" and he had occasionally proven his point. A man with Twain’s "pen warmed up in hell", he had written a book that had [...]
Outside of the Box
Nobel Prize winning physicist and genius quantum mechanic Niels Bohr once pointed out that "Prediction is difficult, especially about the future" — a fact that he demonstrated empirically with respect to subatomic particles. Former Economist writer and business historian Marc Levinson has demonstrated that the maxim applies to technology businesses as well in a business [...]
Hitchens vs. God and Islamic Jihad
Our crack shot, karate-chopping, head-bashing action-hero Christopher Hitchens calls a spade a damned shovel in today’s Slate. His piece, entitled "Don’t Mince Words: The London car-bomb plot was designed to kill women" begins Why on earth do people keep saying, "There but for the grace of God …"? If matters had been very slightly different [...]
"No Power in the Market and No Voice in the System"
Bill Gates’ Harvard commencement address is being circulated widely in Silicon Valley — and with good reason. He gave an outstanding speech (rather, he wrote an outstanding speech — he cannot deliver a speech to save his life). In the tradition of commencement speeches, Gates reminded grads of their social obligations — a noblesse oblige [...]
