Anirvan Chatterjee

Climate action now! Our report from Japan

2009-10-24T16:32:14Z

Japan's cherry blossom season is changing. The blooming of the cherry blossoms used to coincide with the traditional start of the fiscal year, but it's been slipping back over the past few decades. There's public awareness of a changing climate; the challenge is figuring out appropriate policy responses. With the election of a new government, it looks like Japan may finally be ready to get on the right track.

We spoke to a number of people about Japan's response to the climate crisis, including climate activists Kenro Taura (Kiko Network) and Naoyuki Yamagishi (WWF Japan), as well as a host of other local activists, academics, environmentalists, and acquaintances. Here's the story, as we understand it. (All mistakes are our own.)

KYOTO: Kyoto's role in the global spotlight as the host of the 1997 climate change summit had a big impact in Japan. While the resulting Kyoto Protocol turned out to be a mixed bag, the conference galvanized national attention around the issue, inspiring new climate activists around the country. Hundreds of Japanese groups launched a Kiko ("climate") Forum during the conference, which was later turned into a permanent Kiko Network, now made up of about 150 member groups.

INACTION: Again and again, we were told that Japanese citizens often expect the government to resolve problems, and the climate crisis is no different. Awareness doesn't always translate into political engagement or action. Local environmental NGOs do an amazing amount with a relatively small base of support -- not because the issue doesn't resonate with people, but because in a group-oriented society, even sympathizers are sometimes uncomfortable with direct engagement.

ROADBLOCKS: While citizens haven't spoken out in a big way, the corporate sector hasn't been shy. After the Kyoto agreement, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, supported by major business interests, seemed to look the other way on tackling Japan's emissions. At one point, the government was spending an astounding 80+% of it's climate change budget on road-widening. The Keidanren, the largest industrial association in Japan, has been consistently pushing the government to look for cuts elsewhere, or risk harming industrial competitiveness. While the Kyoto Protocol required Japan to set a midterm target of reducing emissions by 6% over 1990 levels, the Keidanren was reportedly lobbying to increase emissions by 4%. The environmental ministry has been reasonably supportive of stronger climate policy, but they've been fairly powerless compared to the trade and industrial ministry. Rules that have been put into place are often toothless; for example, local government agencies are required to create, but not implement, climate action plans.

SECRETS: Since the 1970s, Japanese companies have had to report on energy use to the government trade ministry. This high-quality data was never made public, even to the environmental ministry, but activists got their hands on the energy use data after Japan passed a freedom of information law in 2000. The shocking disclosure? 200 industrial sites are responsible for half of Japan's carbon emissions, and just 14,000 companies are responsible for 70% of Japan's emissions. A tiny number of major players do most of the harm -- and the data names names and allocates responsibility. Unlike the situation in most countries, the Japanese people now know who the nation's biggest carbon polluters are, their names and addresses. The next step? Action.

OBAMA-ESQUE: Japan's dramatic 2009 national elections marked the electoral loss of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), in power since 1955, to the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ). While voters focused much more on the economy than the environment, the DPJ used climate policy as a way to clearly distinguish themselves from the incumbent government. New DPJ Prime Minister Hatoyama recently announced that Japan was ready for a 25% cut in greenhouse gas emissions over 1990 levels by the year 2020, which falls within the IPCC's 25-40% reduction guidelines. The local climate action community's happy at signs that the new government's taking the issue seriously, but are worried that vague early promises will be whittled down. While the industrial lobbies have less sway with the DJP than they did with the LDP, they're working overtime to block meaningful action.

COPENHAGEN: Japanese climate activists are hoping to hammer out a number of issues in the Japanese negotiating position before December's Copenhagen climate talks. There's a commitment to 25% greenhouse gas reductions (over 1990 levels) by 2020, but it's not clear how much of the 25% will come from genuine domestic reductions, as opposed to buying offshore offsets, REDDs, and emissions trading. The government's discussing financing schemes for developing countries' climate-related projects, but specific numbers haven't been announced. And there's still limited support for licensing of essential green technologies to developing countries, in part because of bad experiences licensing technology to nations like China.

HOPE: We celebrated October 24th, 350.org's international day of climate action at two Tokyo events. First we met up with young concerned community members for a picnic in Yoyogi Park, then we hit the "Make The Rule" symposium in a crowded Tokyo conference room. A broad swath of the Japanese climate action community's come together around a national campaign to "Make the Rule" -- develop sweeping national climate change legislation to pin down specifics, and give industries and communities the basis they need to start taking action. It was exciting to see a room full of Japanese environmental movers and shakers, from their 30s to their 70s, strategizing on how to transition Japan to a low-carbon economy. It's going to be a tough fight, but Japan's green policy advocates seem ready to take on the challenge.

Agriculture 2.0 in Tokyo: Healthy food for hungry salarymen

2009-10-16T06:26:32Z

We spent last week in Tokyo's Nakano district. The streets are lovely, narrow and full of life; everybody walks. There are hundreds of little restaurants, bars, and delis minutes away. Our neighbors love eating out, and between sightseeing and interviews, we've enjoyed doing our best to fit in, including eating local takes on curry, salads, breads.

Fusion cuisines are great, but it's not just recipes being imported: over 60% of Japan's food is imported from overseas, a huge problem, both for environmental and food security reasons.

We hit Green Drinks Tokyo, a monthly mixer for folks interested in all things bright green. About sixty young people crowded into an event space to hear speakers talk about "Agriculture 2.0," projects connecting urban dwellers with healthy local food, while supporting farmers and educating consumers.

We heard from Noryoku, a Web 2.0 take on community-supported agriculture. Individuals rent small plots of land planted with one of twelve varieties of rice on participating organic farms; your farmer mails you your harvest. Rent's about $550 per year, and harvests average 40 kg (88 pounds) annually. Farmers get steady income, while renters get good food and a connection to the land. (The typical renter -- a thirtysomething urban male!) Another set of speakers talked about their work on downtown Tokyo farmer's markets, and their new newsletter. Another group floated their idea of rice scholarships for students -- supplementing traditional scholarships with Japanese rice, encouraging healthy local eating.

Our favorite project? A for-profit startup that brings displays full of fresh local produce into office buildings, letting workers easily buy healthy snacks. The company, Trace, was founded by Yoshihisa Haruyama, a farm kid from Hokkaido who studied at UCLA, worked at Google Tokyo, but left his job to launch an Agriculture 2.0 startup. We met up with Yoshi to learn more. He identified three big worrying trends:

Farming in Japan is collapsing. It's hard work for very low profits, with strong competition from imports. Yoshi's youngest brother's making a go of it on the family farm, but he's an anomaly -- the average age of the Japanese farmer is now 67.
Young Japanese office workers work can work 12+ hour days, 5-6 days a week. Single workers often don't cook or eat at home, or shop for produce.
Japan's facing the early beginnings of a new obesity crisis, as more people adopt American-style diets.

It's common for large offices to have snack boxes, selling junk food and candy for around 100 Yen ($1.10) per item; these are mostly provided by a single office snack provider company. Yoshi's startup plans to take on this market, placing glass showcases in offices selling fresh seasonal cut fruit and juices at 150-250 Yen (about $1.65-2.75) per item.

Produce is sourced directly from farmers in Hokkaido and Chiba, cutting out the middleman, and buying leftover produce consumers won't buy -- local shoppers tend to be particularly leery of misshapen produce. The food's processed in Tokyo, and distributed to local office buildings. The distribution team ensures that containers are returned and reused, and any waste food (only 3% of total) is composted and sold to local farmers. Trace has 15 offices in beta test, and has agreements to launch in almost 200 offices by the end of the year.

Yoshi told us he was inspired in part by the healthy food served at Google's Tokyo office, and it seems like he's still thinking about mass customization of services, using user feedback, surveys, and demographic data for each office to vary the product mix around the year. For example, employees at a beta office that's 80% female expressed significantly higher interest in skin health, so their product mix includes more apple juice.

Trace also takes customer education seriously, figuring the more consumers learn about fresh healthy local produce, the more likely they are to choose Trace. Yoshi showed us their handy new iPhone app for smarter shopping, showing users what's in season, and how to visibly identify the freshest produce at the market. They also produce a weekly email sent Monday mornings to every employee at participating offices. More tech-enabled educational tools on the way. In their tests, they've found that seeing early adopters eat healthier snacks in the office can create positive peer pressure on others to do the same.

Tokyo, and perhaps all of Japan, appears to be obsessed with streetside vending machines; the streets of our neighborhood in Tokyo are littered with them, selling bottled water, coffee, juices, soda, chips, even ice cream. Just because this is a food-oriented culture doesn't mean that everything about is healthy or sustainable. It's been fun discovering urban consumer-side projects pushing for change. It'll take all of us, and all our skills (organizing, technology, marketing) to make change.

(Next post: Why Japanese climate activists are having their "Obama" moment)

Megacity

2009-10-08T14:38:28Z

It's Tuesday night, 9:30 pm. I'm in Shinjuku, Tokyo, heading back home from a bookstore. It's late and rainy, and the path's a bit confusing, so I ask a fellow pedestrian in my mangled travel Japanese to point me to the train station. He does so, indicating that he's headed that way himself. We walk together, taking a shortcut to get out of the rain, navigating through a lonely section of the huge underground arcade.

Finally, I see a third person walking nearby. A fourth, a fifth. And then suddenly, the number explodes. I see twenty people around me. A hundred. Two hundred. And I'm moving in a giant sea of humanity toward the train station entrance, a human millipede in motion.

We whiz through the fare gates, a solid block of mostly-black-clad flesh. This is like having all of Heathrow packed into a single train station. There must be over ten thousand people passing through here, just in the areas where I'm walking. It reminds me of that moment at the end of large concerts or sporting events where everyone's heading out in the same direction at once. But this isn't peak rush hour -- it's hours in, and the people are still coming, hordes of tired office workers heading home, young people, shoppers, and the very occasional foreigner or woman in a kimono to keep things interesting. Some carry dripping umbrellas, others walk in wet jackets, while others just look damp. The noise of our collective footsteps and occasional conversation reverberates, a continuous companion as we make our way forward.

Very soon, most of us will have made our way to the right platform and crowded into trains which get emptier and emptier at every successive station, as Tokyo's huddled masses yearning to get home disembark, looking forward to a good night's sleep.

I have chills. This is what a megacity feels like.

Crossing the Pacific by container ship: a report back

2009-10-01T16:23:38Z

We've arrived in Japan, after ten days traveling by container ship. We boarded the MV Hanjin Madrid at the Port of Seattle, and disembarked today in Yokohama. It was a surprisingly fun trip: the people were nice, the accommodations were comfortable, and the views were beautiful. We have a new appreciation for how incredibly massive the Pacific Ocean is, crossing it mile by mile at ground level.

Click here to see a slideshow
(accommodations, food, engine room, etc.)

SHIP: Container ships carry cargo in containers, the kind you see on freight trains, and are responsible for moving around much of the world's manufactured products. Our ship, the MV Hanjin Madrid, is Korean-owned, and managed by NSB, a German shipping company. It's about twelve stories tall above sea level at peak, and has a capacity of about 4,000 containers. Most of the space on the ship is for cargo. Living quarters are a relatively tiny section in the middle of the ship. We were essentially living in a narrow nine-story apartment building located in a sea of containers. A cargo ship isn't a cruise ship; people, particularly passengers, are incidental. You're cooped up in one tiny area, expected to take care of yourself, and a wide variety of trade-offs are made to optimize for cargo over people. For example, cargo ships don't have stabilizers, so you really feel the ship's every motion.

ACCOMMODATIONS: We felt guilty at how nice the accommodations were. We'd envisioned roughing it across the ocean, but instead, we were put up in a very nice sixth-floor cabin, 320 square feet (30 square meters) in size, with a large sitting room, a bedroom with a queen-sized bed, and small private bathroom. It was essentially a tiny apartment, with furniture, built-in storage, and electronics (CD and DVD players). Crew members spend four months at a time on board, so their rooms are thoughtfully designed to be snug, but comfortable, living spaces. We loved the design details--a discreet built-in retractable clotheslines in the bathroom, a reading light right next to the bed, a desk with handy power outlets, and lots of mirrors to make the space appear larger and brighter. We had access to a shared washer and dryer, a gym room (where we played ping pong), a sauna, and a swimming pool (not filled because of the ship's rocking). We were able to look out the window or step outside anytime to see the ocean. This was the opposite of transoceanic flight, with all its hurry, security theater, and cramped antiseptic spaces.

FOOD: Three meals were served every day, all "hearty sailor fare" -- large, and meat-heavy. We ended up getting small portions, eating a lighter, more vegetarian subset of the full meal. There were separate meals served for officers and crew, though that broke down by lines of nationality, so Europeans (most officers, a few crew members) and passengers would sit in one room and eat "European" food while speaking German and English, and the Filipinos (most crew members, a few officers) would sit in the other room and eat Filipino food while speaking Tagalog. This is the stuff sociology dissertations are made of, but we didn't explore, just ate.

A sample daily menu:

breakfast: stramer max bread, cereal, cheese, juice, coffee, tea, milk, fruit
lunch: fried fish, fried potato, French beans, greens with pea soup
dinner: sweet and sour pork, steamed rice, cucumber salad, cold cuts, cheese, salad

SEASICKNESS: The ship rocked (literally), but we did OK. We'd worried about and prepared for the possibility of nausea but thankfully neither of turned out to be particularly prone to seasickness, barely needing to touch our stash (accupressure wrist bands, ginger gum, Dramamine, and prescription behind-the-ear motion sickness patches). Much of the voyage was quite comfortable, like being in a subway, or a passenger airplane under reasonable conditions; it's easy to ignore low-grade jittery motion. But we did hit ocean turbulence at times, with about a day in the middle when the ship was rocking back and forth heavily, worse than an airplane in heavy turbulence. Of course unlike a plane, we weren't strapped into tiny seats; we'd get up, take a shower, get breakfast, all the normal things people do during a day. Anirvan realized he was blessed with motion drowsiness; whatever it is that makes him drift off on long BART rides kicked in on board, so he kept dozing off as the ship rocked him to sleep, spending 16 hours of a particularly rocky day comfortably asleep.

PEOPLE: It was strange being the only passengers on a working vessel. Everyone else was on a four month stint on board, continuously looping around the Pacific. The officers were mostly German, with a few Poles and Filipinos; the crew was all Filipino, with one European. We got a chance to chat with several people, on and off work time. Folks were incredibly polite, sometimes pretty friendly. It's highly-skilled and relatively well-paid work, but having to spend four of every six months away can be difficult; many sailors have families, keeping in touch with expensive phone calls and limited email. With efficiencies in the industry, shore leave time is now often just hours, giving them little ability to set foot in the countries they deliver goods to. This is a big change. Our captain, for example, had spent two weeks on shore leave in Yokohama back in the less-efficient 1970s. Technology's also made another big difference: almost everyone on board now has personal tech/media stashes: CDs, DVDs, MP3 players full of music, laptops full of movies, games, etc. This means folks spend more free time behind screens and headphones, less social than in the past; some things are the same the world over.

CARGO: Our ship hauled 2,800 cargo containers across the Pacific, carrying goods possily worth between $50 and $500 million (our uneducated estimate). No matter which window we looked out of, which deck we stood on, we were always in a sea of cargo containers in the middle of the ocean. And yet on a day to day basis, the crew seemed to give very little attention to the cargo, besides making sure the containers were safe and secure. The containers are generic and unmarked, and except in the case of dangerous goods, the officers and crew have little or no idea what it is they're hauling. It's a very anonymous experience, acting as the corporate courier service of the seas.

ENVIRONMENT: We decided to travel by cargo container ship because of concerns around the climate impacts of travel, but we learned about a host of other interesting environmental issues and concerns on board:

fuel: the ship guzzles incredibly massive quantities of low-grade fuel, except near countries that require cleaner higher-grade fuel; the ship carries multiple types of fuel, switching between them as required
ballast water: when ships pull in seawater at one location, and releases it in another, they risk unintentionally carrying ocean life with them, which can be destructive to recipient ecosystems
drinking water: we drank and washed with UV-treated desalinated ocean water, probably better-monitored than bottled water on shore.
sewage disposal: sewage on board is biologically treated and gray water is released into the ocean
waste disposal: there are a variety of concerns about what and where different kinds of waste can be disposed of; there are also concerns about different ports having different waste disposal practices

TRY THIS AT HOME, KIDS: Taking a container ship instead of a plane worked out really well for us. Container ships are neither sustainable nor scalable, but to the extent that it's greener than flying, we'd totally encourage folks to give freighter travel a try. It's an option for reasonably healthy able-bodied people with flexible schedules and low food restrictions. We got our booking through a company called Freighter World, and would recommend them to others.

Six responses to "Fireproof"

2009-09-27T21:26:26Z

While traveling by sea from the US to Japan, we discovered the officers' pool of DVDs; unfortunately for us, most were in German, as might be expected for the primarily-German officers. Then one of the Filipino crew members shared with us his personal stash of English language movies. As we sometimes do while flying, we ended up watching movies that we wouldn't normally think of watching at home.

Among these was Fireproof, a drama about a man responding to a failing marriage, combining Lifetime Original Movie aesthetics with Christian right values. I came in expecting to see pure dreck, but was surprised to see that it wasn't as bad as I'd expected. (Hooray for low expectations.)

The movie

Big-time Christian right media guy Kirk Cameron plays Caleb, a firefighter who saves lives on the job, but can't make his marriage work at home. (Pause for groans.) Caleb's an effective leader at work, but at home, is an angry misogynist, unable to communicate or schedule, unwilling to help around the house, and stashing cash away to buy a boat instead of applying it to household needs. His wife, Catherine, spends weekends with her ailing mom, who needs $25,000 of medical supplies. Both husband and wife are culturally-Christian white Southerners, though neither are particularly devout.

Caleb pressures Catherine to seek a divorce, resisting a friend's suggestion to try counseling. Caleb's dad asks him to hold off on a divorce till he tries the "love dare," a 40-day plan on how to be nicer to your partner. Caleb reluctantly gives it a try, but after years of mistreatment, Catherine's not having any of the look-honey-I-made-you-coffee-please-don't-divorce-me routine, and starts flirting with a friendly doctor at the hospital where she works.

As Caleb's frustration grows, his born-again dad starts barraging him, insisting that he can't fix his relationship until he embraces Christianity. His best friend, also Christian, tries to convince him that marriage is for life, and that there's never a reason for divorce. Stressed and vulnerable, Caleb agrees to turn to Jesus, at which point his self-esteem and self-control shoot up. Catherine comes to trust the reformed Caleb again after she discovers that he's liquidated his Boat Fund to buy medical supplies for his mother-in-law. After apologies and hugging, they renew their marriage vows, reframed as a religious covenant marriage.

1. What the Christian Right and Communists have in common

Fireproof is a cultural product stemming from a larger Christian right concern about real family living. I appreciated seeing its emphasis on building stronger relationships. To the extent that I identify as being part of a relatively secular left, I don't see a lot of institutions around me focusing on the whole person, politically and personally. Instead, there's a patchwork quilt of organizations and institutions, whose ideologies may or may not match.

Compared to that, singular religio-political ideologies are certainly more effective at caring for a whole person. Maybe that's why the only left movement I can think of comparable to the Christian right is early- and mid-20th century socialist/communist spaces, with their own day care, night schools, newspapers, theater, etc. For those of us who don't want to live in a cultural bubble (either Communist or Christian-right), life's harder, though perhaps richer, for lack of ideologically-linked sets of institutions trying to take care of the whole person.

2. A progressive Fireproof

Here's my vision of what Fireproof might look like in my vision of a marginally more progressive America.

In the movie, Catherine's biggest stressor is being a caregiver to her aging and disabled parents, and the financial stress of being unable to buy her mother medical supplies like a wheelchair and better bed. I'd prefer to live in a more compassionate society where Catherine's mother has a higher standard of in-home care, and access to the medical supplies she needs. No senior citizen should have to wait for her son-in-law to find Jesus before regaining mobility.
Caleb and Catherine should have easy access to high-quality counseling services at free or low cost. It's not clear to me that Caleb would have taken it up, but Catherine, in particular, seems like the kind of person who'd make use of and hopefully benefit from it.

Now I'm not suggesting that institution of mainstream progressive health care policies would have meaningfully changed the arc of the story, or eliminated the difficulty of working through a tough spot in a marriage. But they would have removed some of the stress, helped make sure Catherine's family was being taken care of, addressed the hard financial realities, and hopefully made dealing with the situation a little easier.

(And how do you pay for that? Personal taxes are possibly part of the mix, so maybe in my scenario, it'd be harder for Caleb to save up for a boat. Me? I'm willing to inconvenience boat owners a bit to see senior citizens taken care of. Caleb's a government official who performs heroic work saving lives. If we can come together to have collective fire protection, we can do the same for medical supplies and mental health services.)

3. Why God?

Taking the premise of the movie as-is, I'm still puzzled as to why the movie needed to be about God, and why the characters couldn't have come to a similar outcome (resolution of long-standing marital problems) in an religiously agnostic context.

Caleb wasn't particularly religious through much of the film. While Caleb's born-again father's advice was Biblically-based, Caleb explicitly ignored the Biblical basis for much of the movie. It's not clear to me why he couldn't have done that for just a bit longer, through the end of the film.
At a low point, Caleb's father pressured him to accept Jesus. This seems like a low blow, and a bit cult-ish, preying on his son's weaknesses at his time of need. I don't see how a couple of really good conversations couldn't have gotten Caleb out of his funk, instead of dad lecturing his stressed-out son about how "you've been spitting at Jesus."
Catherine seems to have signed up for Caleb's Christian program only after declaring that whatever it was that was making him a better husband, she wanted to share in that too. That's not a religious conversion. If Caleb had told her that he'd been helped by therapy, the movie might have ended with the two of them hugging at the therapist's office, instead of doing a public religious covenant ceremony. Heck, if Caleb had been inspired by Islam instead of Christianity, one gets the sense that Catherine may have been tolerant of that as well, as long as it got the job done.

4. In defense of divorce

Caleb's best friend's insistence that marriage is for life is creepy. I'm very happily married, hopefully for life, but feel better knowing that being together is a happy choice, not an oppressive religious obligation. Divorce can be a healthy and appropriate option. I fear that Caleb's best friend would be anti-divorce even in the face of deeply abusive relationships ("your husband beats you up? try some counseling, and pray harder -- divorce is sinful").

5. The Suburban South

I don't see a lot of movies set in an integrated contemporary suburban South. For all I know, that where the plurality of Fireproof's American viewers live. I still enjoyed the setting, as a reminder of our country's diversity.

6. Separation of church and state

One of the aspects of the movie I liked best was the way that it showed sympathetic characters operating within a Christian right frame in a world where there's a separation of church and state, and yet the characters seem to do just fine, never needing to resort to theocratic solutions.

Caleb's workplace includes Christians and atheists, who get along very well. A few of the firefighters discuss religion and values in their personal time, but without feeling any need to institutionalize it. Catherine's coworkers never explicitly out their religious affiliations or discuss issues of faith, and yet they're portrayed as perfectly reasonable people.

At the end of the movie, Caleb and Catherine choose to get a re-commitment ceremony, framed as a covenant marriage, layering their personal religious beliefs on top of the basic marriage document. This is very significant, indicating that the characters want something beyond the legal institution of marriage, and are able to celebrate that cultural and religious meaning without trying to redefine everyone else's marriages by making divorce harder to access legally. Caleb and Catherine's world may be consistent with same-sex marriage, no-fault divorce, community property, and equal legal rights for men and women. Where their views deviate from minimum legal norms, they ultimately seem able to take responsibility for themselves, living in a pluralistic society without demanding special rights for themselves, or asking others to give up theirs.

25 hours a day, 6 days a week

2009-09-26T16:04:03Z

Written aboard the MV Hanjin Madrid, part of our Year of No Flying

Almost every day of our trip from Seattle to Yokohama by sea lasted 25 hours. Traveling westwards, we gained an extra hour every time we traveled a time zone, 1/24th of the planet. We'd head down to dinner at the mess, and there would be a big sign on the door: "RETARD 1 HOUR TONIGHT."

I made a practice of setting back our clocks every night at 10:00 pm. In fact, I even set an alarm to do it. It beeped at 10:00 pm, and I changed the clocks back to 9:00 pm. An hour later, it beeped again -- it was 10:00 pm again. I quickly learned to delete the automated alarm after I'd reached it the first time.

I wish I could say that we did something amazing with that extra hour every day, but we didn't. Sadly, it just blended into the copious quantities of free time we had. For those who don't have it, an extra hour of free time every day is an unimaginable luxury; but for us, on a ship for a week and a half without hard scheduled tasks, it made no difference at all.

Unfortunately, you only get 25 hours a day going westwards. Coming back the other way, you end up advancing your clock as you go, losing as hour at each step, leaving just 23 hours a day. The difference between 25 and 23 hours may not have made much difference to us, but according to crew members we spoke to, they definitely noticed the difference.

I've read that it takes the body about a full day to catch up with an hour's time difference. Fly from San Francisco to New York on Monday, and your body will have adjusted to New York time by Thursday. When it comes to minimizing jet lag, ships beat planes hands down, by traveling at the speed of the body's natural adjustment to time differences.

And then Friday disappeared. On a Wednesday afternoon, an officer informed us that, by the way, Friday would not exist. We'd just skip ahead from Thursday to Saturday, losing a day as we headed toward the International Date Line. Oddly enough, we'd be losing our day some ways before we actually hit the date line. It turns out that we'd normally have lost Saturday, instead of Friday -- but the crew works a shorter day Saturday, and would be unhappy seeing their day of (relative) rest suddenly vanish. Shipboard time would be modified accordingly.

This was my first experience with shipboard time, an idiosyncratic timezone floating through space, applying only to a tiny band of sailors (and us). Officers on the bridge were incredibly aware of time at local ports and UTC, but shipboard time ruled every important part of our lives -- work times, meal times, and occasionally, social event times. So far away from everything else, it made little sense to hew religiously to arbitrary external requirements. Time is ultimately for the people.

Blindness

2009-09-22T13:55:11Z

Written aboard the MV Hanjin Madrid, part of our Year of No Flying

I wake up at night. Pitch black. The bed moves, as if I'm in the beginnings of an earthquake. I'm on a ship. In the middle of the Pacific. And I need to pee.

I feel around, find a wall, make my way to the bathroom, do the needful. Why is it so dark? I can't see my hand in front of my nose. B and I fully closed the shades at night in our cabin, before going to bed. I didn't realize how effective those shades would be. It's been a long time since I've been in such total darkness. I feel around, trying to find the clothes I hung to dry in the bathroom. My pants have mostly dried, but my thick cotton socks are still sopping.

I head back to bed, thirsty. We left a water bottle on the table; where is it? I slowly sweep my arm around several inches above the table, hoping to make contact with the bottle. Failure. I find only the book I was reading last night, and my glasses.

The male line of my family is prone to poor vision. There was a time when I had a -5 prescription, my dad had a -10, and my grandfather had -15, My grandfather slowly went blind over the years, the soda-bottle lenses of his glasses increasingly unable to compensate against the effects of diabetes. What would he have done in my situation?

I feel around on the table, very carefully. My grandfather was incredibly organized, with or without sightedness. At his home, he'd navigate back to his room, open a drawer, and find a small item exactly where he remembered leaving it years ago. Sight makes us lazy, forgiving sloppiness. It's like the way cell phones have changed the way we make plans with others, making us more comfortable with half-made plans we hope to flesh out along the way.

Some time after my grandfather lost his sight, he and my father were heading to a small corner market a few blocks from the family home in Kolkata. My dad held his father's arm, as they wended their way through the streets. Then the power went out. Everything flickered and disappeared -- street lights, lights from homes, the sound of televisions. Pitch black. My father must have exclaimed. His father didn't. He just continued on, leading his son through the dark to the corner store. "Two more steps, then take a very large step," he told my father, guiding him over a gap in the sidewalk. My grandfather led my father safely to the store, and back home. In the land of darkness, the blind man is king.

I spend another minute, trying to find the water bottle, my hand running across every manner of unfamiliar shape except the one I'm looking for. Finally, I get up, find the shades, and pull them open a tad. Light streams in. There's the water bottle, right in front of me, mocking my sense of space and touch. I take a drink, and climb back into bed, falling asleep to the ship's slow rocking.

On a freighter in the Pacific

2009-09-22T05:00:00Z

By the time you read this, we should be aboard the MV Hanjin Madrid, a container ship traveling from the Seattle to Yokohama, Japan. (See our live position!) Neither of us has been at sea before (paddleboats on Lake Merritt don't count), but travel by ship used to be the backbone of transcontinental travel. We remember old family stories, like that of Barnali's uncle, who sailed from India to England in the 1940s--a long journey, and a major event in the family. Jet age travel has made our journeys easier, and yet more abrupt.

Our ship will take 10 days to sail from Seattle to Yokohama. The MV Hanjin Madrid is a container ship, carrying containers of cargo around the Pacific (Hong Kong, China, Japan, Canada, US, and back). We'll be staying in an officer's room about 320 square feet (30 square meters) in size, consisting of a bedroom, living area, and attached bathroom. The ship's officers are mostly German, and the crew mostly Filipino. We'll eat with everyone else, and are expected to basically stay out of their way, as they do their work.

A ship isn't a simple substitute for a plane. If we were to fly, we could go to any number of places at a whim, with few restrictions. But the effect on our carbon footprint? Huge! By choosing not to fly, we're forced to be more deliberate about where we go, and how long we stay. The prospect of taking slower modes of transportation (ships, buses, and trains) made it easier for us to decide to go to fewer places, staying longer at each location. We also hope that avoiding flying (and using more common and affordable modes of travel) will give us opportunities to interact with a broader cross-section of people, helping make more visible everyday political and geographic boundaries.

We discovered freighter travel when seeking alternatives to carbon-spewing international air travel. It's relatively obscure, the province of adventurous travelers, shipping geeks, people unable or afraid to fly, and more recently, green-minded travelers. So is freighter travel really greener than flying? Container ships are substantially more efficient at moving goods relative to airplanes. From our position, because a container ship carries cargo, we're essentially hitching a free ride. Our presence and our dollars are insignificant when compared to the amount and value of goods being transported, so our choice to travel or not travel by freighter won't affect the success or failure of the route, unlike with passenger air travel, where reductions in passenger utilization can lower the number of flights. Unfortunately, cargo ships are still responsible for tremendous levels of conventional pollution, though there are efforts to address this. Freighter ships are definitely climate-unsustainable, though less so than planes.

This is not green travel, nor guilt-free travel, but it's the first of our experiments in greener international travel, as we try to understand what it means to try living without aviation.

As we sit here typing, we're both a little anxious about the trip. Barnali's thinking about safety, and not being connected. Anirvan's worried about having eleven days of email piled up when he gets to Japan. It probably says something about us and our lives, that we can't leave our phones and Internet connections for a week without getting antsy. On the other hand, we're excited about seeing night skies full of stars, ocean waters as far as the eye can see, and the chance to try something very new for us, armed with books (him) and hot sauce (her) to keep us grounded.

(Next post: Life on a freighter ship)

Road trip to Seattle, meeting green communicators

2009-09-20T06:40:52Z

Barnali and I are starting our year's journey with a road trip from Berkeley to Seattle with Charlie. (Our freighter leaves from the Port of Seattle Monday, September 21.) The three of us have been enjoying stopping to see friends along the way.

Our trip was inspired by persuasive environmental communication. The first time we used a carbon calculator, it gave us not just a number, but also showed that we emitted more greenhouse gases than 90% of Americans; seeing that was an emotional punch to the gut, forcing us to reevaluate our lives.

We met three persuasive environmental communicators -- and a really bad one -- during our road trip to Seattle.

In Portland, we met up with Ravi Gadad, an old friend from high school. He works for Project DX, a startup helping cities offer residents ways to go greener, e.g. by installing solar panels, improving stormwater management, etc. Early adopters aren't enough -- for these initiatives to work, communities need to make it incredibly easy for homeowners to see options, calculate savings, and find installers. His lesson learned: usability thinking is critical to turn awareness into action (and make it scale).

We spent the night with David Chott, a UC Berkeley classmate, now the online coordinator for the Campaign for America's Wilderness. They support an unlikely coalition of environmentalists, hunters, and everyday conservationists working to preserve forests by giving them federal wilderness designation. David and his colleagues support local organizing efforts in a variety of ways, including online support. I loved hearing his stories about how good tools can help catalyze local self-organizing efforts.

We're big fans of Walk Score, a clever system to quantify how walking-friendly a location is, based on proximity to stores, schools, and other institutions. (What's yours?) In Seattle, we met Mike Mathieu from Front Seat, the developers of Walk Score. He described the process of taking it from a concept to a project gone viral, working with constituencies like planners and the real estate industry, and how they're working to expand and measure reach. We also discussed our Trip Footprint project, and ways we could try to expand reach. His advice to us? Ignore featuritis, focus on distribution, and take users' natural instincts into account when messaging complicated ideas.

On the other hand, we were very disappointed by our visit to Boeing's Future of Flight Museum. We came in wanting to know about how flight's going to be affected by its single biggest existential threat -- our collective need for an 80-90% net reduction in greenhouse gases. Instead, we learned a lot about next-generation inflight entertainment systems, saw self-promotional film clips galore, and discovered only a lone exhibit on industry research on algae-based sustainable biofuels. (Which touched on the fuels-vs-food problem, but avoided the debate over feasability). A lay person visiting the museum may not have realized that aviation's future is inextricably linked to innovation and policy work to prepare for a lower-carbon world with hard carbon caps. Even just repeating the IATA's green PR would have been helpful. Unfortunately, the Future of Flight museum totally flubbed on discussing the future of flight.

(Next post: Preparing to sail to Japan)

Taking the Yahoo challenge

2009-08-17T19:05:50Z

I recently spent a month using Yahoo instead of Google as my default search engine. (Incidentally, the "Google's better, because the Yahoo home page is too busy" argument is bunk--Yahoo's search page at http://search.yahoo.com/ is every bit as clean and simple as Google's.)

I was surprised at how decent Yahoo's search was. Though Google's ranking still seemed to make more intuitive sense, Yahoo did a reasonably good job throughout. Unfortunately,I never felt like Yahoo's search was actually doing a noticeably better job than Google's. It was just a series of minor disappointments when I noticed results that Google could have done better with.

Yahoo's typo detection is very poor, compared to Google's:

When I searched for "eage book mod_perl" (with "eagle" mispelled "eage"), Yahoo didnt catch my typo. Google caught the error, and gave me exactly what I wanted--information on Practical mod_perl, a.k.a. the "Eagle" book.
When I searched for "ighthouseapp", Yahoo didn't figure out that I wanted to find out about the Lighthouse product, located at www.lighthouseapp.com. Google did.

Some of the results were just bizarre, but have since been fixed by a reindex:

I searched for "yahoo india news" and the fourth results down on the search results was a nonexistent page on Yahoo's own site, leading to a 404
For some reason, results from Target.com were coming up absurdly high for a wide variety of results. It looks like this has been addressed now.

I was also surprised at how tech-centric Google is, vs. Yahoo:

When I searched for "puppet" on Yahoo, the first page of results referred to, well, puppets. Over on Google, the first two hits were for the open source system administration software called Puppet. (Of course, in this case, I really was looking for the Puppet software, so the point goes to Google, but the bias is interesting to note.)

My biggest practical irritation with Yahoo Search wasn't with the web search itself, but the lack of an integrated blog search. I frequently jump to Google's blog search when I'm trying to find out what people are saying about something. Not having that be just a click away changed the way I interacted with the web, very much for the worse.

The Yahoo challenge was fun, but it actually made me appreciate Google even more. Next up, I'm looking forward to trying Bing for a month. When doing side-by-side tests, it seems to return significantly more relevant results than Yahoo Search (which is likely one good reason for the recent deal). I may end up back at Google, but I want to know that I'm using it for the right reasons, and not just laziness-induced lock-in.

August 15: Marching for India, and the planet

2009-08-16T06:23:19Z

August 15 is India's Independence Day. B and I spent the day marching to save South Asia in Richmond, California, while keeping an eye on the India Day parade in New York.

We spent our day in Richmond, California, participating in a mobilization to turn up the heat on Chevron, a major California polluter, and part of a group of companies that's been trying to thwart the best efforts of citizens from around the world trying to come up with a fair, realistic, science-based approach to dealing with global warming.

The mayor was there, as were labor activists, environmentalists, community health organizations, and representatives from communities around the world where Chevron has a presence (Burma, Nigeria, Ecuador, etc.) The message: Chevron, the 5th largest corporation on the planet, needs to stop poisoning the communities it operates in, and stay out of the climate talks, where the future of the planet will be decided.

In Bangladesh and West Bengal, rural communities are dealing with declining fish catches, and bigger floods and droughts. In Bangladesh today, climate refugees are losing everything they own. This is not theoretical. The front-line affected communities of Bangladesh and West Bengal didn't invent this problem; many of those affected don't even have reliable access to electricity. Man-made climate change was caused by developed nations like the U.S., and we need to take a leadership in dealing with the issue; things won't magically change by themselves.

On the other side of the country, the tri-state Federation of Indian Associations was holding its annual India Day parade in New York. The last year was particularly significant for people of Indian origin, as the Delhi High Court just overturned Section 377, the 150-year-old British-era legislation that criminalized gay and lesbian Indians. Unfortunately, the organizers of the India Day parade didn't get the hint, and refused to let Indian gays and lesbians, their friends, and allies celebrate this momentous victory as part of the parade. (Yup, you can have a Pride parade in Bombay, but you can't have a gay float in New York.)

The Indian-American community supports the Indian government's decriminalization of homosexuality, and B and I did our very small parts to directly question the organizers about their stances. A feminist organization ultimately invited LGBT community members to march with them; I wish we could have been there to cheer them on.

The ultimate result? Loads of happy Indian-American LGBTQ people in the parade, and public embarrassment (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10) for the organizers. While parade organizers have previously gone to court to keep gays and lesbians out, the Indian government's change of stance is a game-changer. New York India Day parade organizers can choose to wallow in their cultural conservatism in New York, or change with the times as India moves ahead.

(photos by Roopa Singh)

Five recently read books

2009-08-07T07:00:00Z

Read 2009/8/7:
My Jesus Year: A Rabbi's Son Wanders the Bible Belt in Search of His Own Faith (2008)
by Benyamin Cohen
Rating: 2 of 5
(Religion)

Read 2009/8/6:
The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible (2007)
by A.J. Jacobs
Rating: 4 of 5
(Religion)

Read 2009/8/2:
The Uncomfortable Dead (What's Missing is Missing): A Novel by Four Hands (2005)
by Paco Ignacio Taibo, Subcomandante Marcos
Rating: 3 of 5
(Fiction, Mystery, Politics, Politics, Translated)

Read 2009/7/29:
Words Without Walls: Writing & Art by Women in Prison in Nova Scotia (2007)
by Larsen Capp, Sarah Evans, Sonia Edworthy (eds.)
Rating: 3 of 5
(Poetry)

Read 2009/7/29:
Shutterbug (1998)
by Laurence Gough
Rating: 1 of 5
(Fiction, Mystery)

Readability and HTML::ExtractMain

2009-08-02T02:05:30Z

I'm a big fan of Arc90's Readability tool, which "makes reading on the Web more enjoyable by removing the clutter around what you're reading." It identifies the main body of the article or blog you're reading, re-presents it using an easy-to-read stylesheet, and hides everything else. It's a clever app, and I use it almost every day.

I needed to be able to pull out the main content of a web page for a personal project; it took me a few days till I realized that Readability does exactly that, and that Arc90 actually encourages ports to other platforms.

I just released HTML::ExtractMain, my Perl rewrite of Readability's content identification strategies. It's online at CPAN, and free to use under standard open source licenses. It's been a while since I released code as open source, and it feels good to be able to scratch my own itch while sharing code with other developers.

Last flight

2009-07-30T04:45:12Z

I'm leaving my job as the founder and CEO of BookFinder.com, after almost 13 years. I love what I do, but sometimes you have to leave even though things are good, or you'll never discover anything new.

I'm sitting on the subway, headed home. I just got off a plane from Canada. This'll be my last flight. At least for a while.

The BookFinder.com team (from the US, Germany, and Canada) spent the last week in Canada, training, planning, hanging out. There were also goodbye speeches, cake, and gifts -- I've been lucky to be able to work with such nice people over the years.

It'll be hard to emotionally separate myself from BookFinder.com, but separating from air travel will likely be harder. Growing up in a family of post-1965 transnational immigrants, our history is deeply connected with the democratization of air travel -- countless flights to and from India, Canada, Nigeria, and the United States. Our stories begin and end in airports.

A couple of years back, Barnali and I realized that our carbon footprint is bigger than that of 90% of Americans. We'd made a conscious decision to live car-free in a dense urban community. The numbers shocked us. We dug deeper. The culprit? Air travel.

Our flights overseas were killing us, totally undoing every other green effort we were making. We hemmed and hawed, but global warming is still a numbers game. We wouldn't do faulty accounting at work, and couldn't bring ourselves to do it at home. If we need to reduce CO2 emissions by 90% by 2050, then that can't exclude the aviation sector, responsible for about 3% of global emissions, more than all but a few countries.

Barnali and I are going to spend the next year challenging ourselves to live aviation-free, traveling across continents, talking to environmentalists and planners, and trying to explore solutions to this particularly inconvenient problem -- be that greener aviation technologies, or imagining a post-aviation future. Our project could be a failure, but at this time of impending ecological crisis, we feel moved to try to explore these questions. I hope you'll follow us as we learn.

Five recently read books

2009-07-25T07:00:00Z

Read 2009/7/25:
Natasha and Other Stories (2004)
by David Bezmozgis
Rating: 4 of 5
(Fiction, Short Stories)

Read 2009/7/23:
Sea of Poppies (2008)
by Amitav Ghosh
Rating: 4 of 5
(Bengali, Fiction, South Asia, South Asian Diaspora)

Read 2009/7/16:
The Informer (1965)
by Akimitsu Takagi
Rating: 4 of 5
(Fiction, Mystery, Translated)

Read 2009/7/15:
Agitate! Educate! Organize! American Labor Posters (2009)
by Lincoln Cushing, Timothy W. Drescher
Rating: 4 of 5
(Arts, Organizing)

Read 2009/7/14:
Eco Barons: The Dreamers, Schemers, and Millionaires Who Are Saving Our Planet (2009)
by Edward Humes
Rating: 4 of 5
(Environment, Organizing, Politics)

Exiting BookFinder.com...

2009-07-21T20:32:00Z

I've been working on BookFinder.com for almost 13 years now, but even the most amazing experiences come to an end. I'll be exiting BookFinder.com in August, heading out on the very best of terms, and after years of planning to ensure that our users aren't impacted by the transition.

BookFinder.com started off as my class project in 1996. My best friend Charlie built the 486 computer that it ran on, and we teamed up in 1999 to rewrite the software and run the site as our small business. We've been together every step of the way, designing, building, and managing BookFinder.com (and debating books and politics over lunch every day). I'm delighted to be able to pass my role on to him; the site's in incredibly good hands.

I've been planning to step back for several years now, to work on other projects, travel, and explore new opportunities. Please stay in touch:

via my homepage and weblog
via email, at anirvan (at) chatterjee (dot) not

I'm deeply grateful to the bibliophiles, booksellers, and marketplace operators I've worked with over the years. I've heard some pretty amazing stories, and I always promised myself that when I had some time, I'd try to collect and share them with others.

That's why I'm launching the Online Bookselling History Project, an effort to collect first-hand accounts of the online bookselling trade before 2000. If you were involved with the trade pre-2000, then I want your stories: bookseller BBSes, UIEE conversion nightmares, changing cataloging practices, the bricks vs. clicks debates, etc. You can help put together a patchwork history of our trade during a time of great transition. More on this soon.

P.S. Thank you to everyone who's been part of BookFinder.com since 1996 -- Alison, Asok, Barbara, Boris, Bryan, Chaitee, Charlie, Christine, David, Fredrik, Garner, Giovanni, Hannes, Scott, Shaku, Shauna, Thomas, Tushar, Vanessa, and Wendy. I'm lucky to have friends like you.

[Now Reading: Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh]

Simulated restaurant meals: the next Twitter

2009-07-15T15:57:05Z

A major advertising supplement titled "Japan's Plan for Growth" in the July 20 issue of Fortune features this doozie:

"Quaeed Motwala, a partner in Japan Asia Investment Company...foresees, for example, a virtual 'first date' program in which a man and woman at distant computers ride in a simulated car to a movie theater, screen an actual movie, and then over a simulated restaurant meal share a real conversation. 'This would protect a woman from being in the physical company of someone very unpleasant,' explains Motiwala. If the two get along, the next step is a real date. Seem far-fetched? Perhaps, but so did Twitter not long ago."

What do women want? Obviously simulated restaurant meals to protect them from very unpleasant men. The future of courtship couldn't look brighter. Who says VCs don't have a sense of humor?

This is brilliant, like a little time capsule of the frenetic cyber-prognostications of tech analysts in the early to mid-1990s. Those wacky pranksters at Japan Asia Investment Company's marketing team did a brilliant job of sticking this bit of hokery in the middle of the otherwise serious "Japan's Plan for Growth." Thanks for lightening up my day.

Five recently read books

2009-07-14T07:00:00Z

Read 2009/7/14:
The Anarchist in the Library: How the Clash Between Freedom and Control is Hacking the Real World and Crashing the System (2004)
by Siva Vaidyanathan
Rating: 3 of 5
(Library Information, Politics)

Read 2009/6/25:
Black Hat Blues (2009)
by Rick Dakan
Rating: 3 of 5
(Fiction)

Read 2009/6/23:
Time Expired (1993)
by Susan Dunlap
Rating: 3 of 5
(Bay Area, Berkeley, Fiction, Mystery)

Read 2009/6/21:
Thoughtcrime Experiments (2009)
by Leonard Richardson, Sumana Harihareswara
Rating: 3 of 5
(Fiction, Science Fiction, Short Stories)

Read 2009/6/18:
Geek Mafia (2008)
by Rick Dakan
Rating: 4 of 5
(Fiction)

LGBT identity & climate change at Bengali conference

2009-07-13T06:19:22Z

I helped organize two sessions at the North American Bengali Conference (NABC), held over the 4th of July weekend in San Jose.

One was on LGBT Bengali identity, the other on global warming in South Asia; both issues are really close to my heart. We just put audio and video for the talks online:

LGBT Bengalis: From Calcutta to the Castro
Listen to the MP3, or watch the video

Global warming and the future of Bengal
Listen to the MP3, or watch the video

Rising sea levels design competition

2009-06-16T15:58:10Z

I just ran across the Rising Tides design competition, "an open international design competition for ideas responding to sea level rise in San Francisco Bay and beyond" sponsored by San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission. Submissions are due by June 29.

Per their website:

"Nearly every day, we learn more about sea level rise - one of the most critical impacts of global warming. Individually and collectively, people are seeking solutions to this climate challenge. The issue of sea level rise is clearly of global importance, and both simple and complex design interventions will be needed to sustain quality of life, preserve the environment and ensure continued economic vitality of shoreline communities throughout the world. Challenges include:
Rethinking how to build new communities in areas susceptible to future inundation
Retrofitting valuable public shoreline infrastructure
Protecting existing communities from flooding
Protecting wetlands
Anticipating changing shoreline configurations
At the intersection of rising seas and our coastal human settlements, your ideas are needed. The Rising Tides ideas competition is open to everyone. All are encouraged to bring forward their vision of a future estuarine shoreline that is applicable to San Francisco Bay and beyond."

Five recently read books

2009-06-16T07:00:00Z

Read 2009/6/16:
The Incredible Double (2009)
by Owen Hill
Rating: 4 of 5
(Bay Area, Berkeley, Fiction, Mystery)

Read 2009/6/15:
Rogue Economics (2008)
by Loretta Napoleoni
Rating: 2 of 5
(Economics, Politics)

Read 2009/6/9:
The End of the Jews (2008)
by Adam Mansbach
Rating: 5 of 5 (highly recommended)
(Fiction)

Read 2009/6/5:
Osama Van Halen (2009)
by Michael Muhammad Knight
Rating: 4 of 5
(Fiction, Romance, South Asian Diaspora)

Read 2009/6/3:
Founders at Work: Stories of Startups' Early Days (2008)
by Jessica Livingston
Rating: 5 of 5 (highly recommended)
(Business, Technology)

Climate change, greentech IP, and the future of the planet

2009-06-13T17:50:21Z

There's a raging debate around climate change and intellectual property, and the planet's fate may be linked to the way we think about patent protectionism.

G77 countries at the Bonn climate conference were been demanding access to green technology intellectual property, as a requirement for moving ahead. Industrialized countries have been stonewalling, arguing that greentech IP is private, and can't be shared. G77 countries have come back with a proposal where developed nations would pay into a pool that would buy access to greentech IP, to be shared with developing nations, which has been worrying US politicians advocating for stronger IP rights. This is one of several important threads involved in international climate negotiations, but has been substantially underreported on in the American IP reform community.

I'm particularly interested by India's comparison of greentech IP to essential HIV/AIDS drugs, framing their current demands in light of a widely understood battle over patent protection vs. humanitarian access. I'm hoping to see more folks pick up on this angle, and see where the comparison works, and where it doesn't.

Climate change and the Berkeley shoreline

2009-06-11T07:18:14Z

Depressing news from the Daily Californian:

"An April 7 draft report released by the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission predicted that the sea level in the Bay Area will rise 16 inches by mid-century and 55 inches by 2100, flooding areas of the Berkeley Marina and a few blocks of West Berkeley." (read more...)

For more details, look at the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission (SFBCDC) climate change planning site.

The insider's guide to managing Congress

2009-05-04T05:44:48Z

Boy. The new May 11, 2009 issue of Fortune has a feature called The Business Guide to Congress, featuring tips and tactics for business leaders trying to understand how to manage relations with the legislative branch in the current economic climate. It reads somewhere between The Onion and The Wall Street Journal, in a disconcerting ha-ha-only-serious kind of way.

It features five rules to follow:

Remember populist symbolism (e.g. "If you're in a time bind to get to DC, fly your jet to Philly and take Amtrak from there")
Find an ally who's popular (e.g. "credit unions and community banks are still as popular as apple pie, so they've become useful frontmen for big-bank agendas")
Prepare your story before you're scrutinized (e.g. "'Business leaders create jobs. That's a story that needs to be told.'")
If called to testify, be boring (e.g. "stick to a script religiously (think Obama at a press conference), avoid making news, and be humble and excruciatingly dull")
Rely on Senate centrists (e.g. "it pays to get to know Republicans like Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, Arlen Specter and Charles Graessley; and Democrats like Mary Landrieu, Ben Nelson, Mark Pryor, Tom Johnson, and Evan Bayh")

And if you were curious on how to narrow the scope of financial regulation, or which Senator may crack down on offshore tax havens, the article has answers to those as well. A print-only sidebar discusses bothersome restrictions on lobbying.

Unfortunately, the online version's missing a lovely full-page Venn diagram of 25 legislators that are powerful, business-friendly, and/or willing to listen. Among those profiled, only three fall within every category: Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY), Sen. Arlen Specter (then-R-PA), and Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn). You'll have to plunk down $4.99 to get the lobby-ability infographic, but it's a beaut, and totally recommended.

Fortune magazine--news you can use.

Airports, bananas, and imperialism

2009-04-30T06:27:23Z

I'm reading Naked Airport: A Cultural History of the World's Most Revolutionary Structure by Alastair Gordon. As Gordon discusses about the expansion of early American aviation businesses into Latin America, he quotes early Pan Am exec Sanford Kauffman on his experiences working in Honduras:

"Kauffman had been at his post for only a few weeks when a revolution broke out in Honduras. Rebels were flying old biplanes and dropping bombs onto his airfield. Kauffman telegraphed Miami headquarters and informed his superiors that PAA [Pan America Airways] planes should not attempt to land but should fly directly on to San Salvador. When the local manager of the United Fruit Company inquired why the mail plane hadn't arrived that day, Kauffman told him about the aerial bombardment. The manager replied: 'Why didn't you come in and let me know? We're controlling the revolution, and I'll simply tell them to stop bombing you.' United Fruit had put the president into power in the first place, but when the president hiked the tax on bananas, the company thought it best to have him replaced. 'There's a general who would love to be president,' explain the agent, 'so we're supplying him with funds to buy ammunition and equipment, [and] he'll be the next one.' Kauffman got the message and reopened the airport the next day."

There's more discussion of this fun little corporate imperial anecdote in Kauffman's book, Pan Am Pioneer, in the "Stationed In Honduras" chapter.