Buck's Stories

BEAU PERRY’S PREMIUM OCEANIC

2014-08-01T12:47:00.001-07:00

20 years ago Woodside’s Noel Perry made an appearance on this menu discussing his venture fund based on financing socially beneficial businesses. He and his wife Claire were proactive in a variety of local and global causes; for example helping to found Conservation International, an organization promoting biodiversity. They were also known as the folks who donated Barkley Fields and Park in Woodside. One of Noel’s projects that is sometimes overlooked today was the planting of the oak trees along Cañada Rd. 25 years ago Cañada was a much more barren stretch where there is a thriving forest today.

Their egalitarian work became a model for public service that their five boys have grown up with. The eldest, Beau Perry, is devoting his time to making the world a sounder place. Beau took an MBA in sustainable business management from the Presidio Graduate School and based on his love of surfing, diving and all things related to the sea founded the nonprofit Olazul in 2009. This organization has worked in Mexico and Indonesia innovating market solutions to some of the ocean’s big problems. Their programs are all based on direct partnership with indigenous fishing communities. Olazul plans to do for coastal fishing populations what fair-trade has done for small-scale coffee farmers on land. But instead of modifying existing land-based farm models, these new ocean-based livelihoods need to be built from scratch.
It may surprise you to learn that wild and farmed seafood industries are roughly the same size. And aquaculture is growing rapidly every year while the world’s wild fisheries are either already harvested at capacity or are rapidly declining. Farmed seafood and beef are pound for pound the same sized industries worldwide. Farmed seafood has its bad actors, but compared to beef it is clearly easier on the planet. If aquatic ranching is done right it can be a substantial part of the solution to sustainably feeding the world. In fact certain forms of aquaculture can yield remarkable quantities of healthy food with minimal environmental impact. A few aquaculture models such as seaweed, oyster and clam farming even have positive impacts in that they provide economically significant ecosystem benefits such as cleaning inshore waters, mitigating ocean acidification and coastal erosion as well as providing critical nursery habitat that contributes to wild fisheries restoration.

Beau with Geronimo

We all know about the degradation of the oceans and the seemingly insurmountable task of reversing the increasing levels of plastic, temperature and acidification. But what can one do? One option is to wring our collective hands and lament; the other is to roll up our sleeves and do something. Beau is doing something.

Beau has launched a number of programs including developing alternatives to the cyanide/bleach reef poisoning method used in marine aquarium fish harvesting. He believes that where there are big problems there are big opportunities, and the ocean has more than its share of both. While it takes some investment to realize lasting solutions, there is also money to be made in upgrading and even replacing some of the broken elements of the world’s marine economy.

Beau and I met up to discuss one specific venture he is just beginning to roll out. He recently established a for profit, Premium Oceanic LLC, to work with Olazul in creating a whole new sea vegetable farming industry in Mexico’s Baja California. The fisherfolk there are dealing with the local consequences of global overexploitation of wild fisheries. The coming generation is being left high and dry on the beach without viable livelihood options. Beau is working with these communities to develop a regional network of independent sea farms, which his business will supply with seed and then buy and distribute the harvest. This contract farm model is a strategic choice. He intends to maintain a lean business with a small number of employees, yet one that can scale up production rapidly. The fishermen already have fleets of boats, knowledge of the sea and the political position to get aquaculture permits. They also have an increasing desire to explore new ways of making a living as long as it involves producing food from the sea. Beau has several farms in the region setting up sea vegetable farms in their adjacent waters taking the entrepreneurial leap with him into the depths and into the unknown.

Until 2013 Beau had been working on a new community model for farming shrimp fed with seaweed. But seeing a spike in demand for seaweed products in North America he realized a more immediate opportunity was to develop cultivation of the seaweed itself for direct human consumption. Beau has seen the success of seaweed farmers in Asia (and more recently in Maine) and believes that community grown fresh sea vegetable products will be popular with Americans.

The broader aim is to design, innovate and develop new conservation-compatible livelihoods, as opposed to merely creating jobs. Catching fish is a dying industry. It’s an arduous, dangerous job and a poorly paid one. But having alternative coastal livelihoods balancing managed fisheries with low impact local aquaculture give these coastal communities a way to ensure that future generations thrive.

Green chilies stuffed with abalone over sea lettuce

To grow seagreens Premium Oceanic is doing the hard science right now by identifying the most effective species and techniques. Farming seaweed is, in theory, a magnitude less complicated than open ocean farming and the technology will be easier to deploy to small operations.

The market for high quality seaweed in North America is new, so Beau plans to complete the value chain by developing a brand and building a new sea vegetable market for American consumers. Make a market? Is this possible? Sure. Not only possible but probably inevitable.

But will people really eat it? Well they already do, but the US market consists almost entirely of dried forms imported from Asia, including the valuable Nori used to wrap sushi rolls. And these imports are generally made with the lower grade material not acceptable for the more sophisticated tastes of the Asian market. The difference between the fresh and dried is much like the difference between fresh and dried food of any kind. There is a wide range of leafy brown, red and green sea vegetables and they’re packed with essential vitamins and minerals many of which are harder to find in terrestrial plants. It is as close to wild gathered food as one can get short of foraging in the woods and needs no irrigation, no fertilizer and no arable land.

Many folks encounter seaweed as a decomposing mass on the beach but fresh seaweed comes in a variety of shapes, colors, textures and in many cases delicious flavors. Fresh seaweed includes species that look like soft lettuce but denser and richer with a mild flavor. There are also sea grapes, kelp noodles and Ulva tortillas- even ice cream! Farming vegetables in the ocean won’t solve all the problems in the world’s oceans, but the partnership between Olazul and Premium Oceanic definitely points the way towards a better future.

Having started the new venture in January of this year, he believes he will see the first product harvested later this fall; with exports to the US beginning in 2015. By the end of the decade he hopes to have launched dozens of community seaweed farms across northwestern Mexico, creating hundreds of new livelihoods, producing large quantities of nutrient-dense seaweeds for North American consumers. Beau believes that the economic opportunities that emerge from this effort will create lasting local incentives to protect and restore marine ecosystems.

Beau is creating a new industry from scratch on the West Coast but he is confident that he can make this work because he was brought up to think big about helping the world be a more graceful and fair place for us all.

So here we are full circle. Noel planted a forest in Woodside and Beau is planting forests under the sea. I agree with Beau that seaweed farming in North America is an idea whose time has come. Will you be seeing fresh seaweed on the menu at Buck’s? Absolutely.

AUTODESK’S PIER 9 WORKSHOP

Autodesk's Carl Bass with ConXtech's Bob Simmons and Kelly Luttrell

Carl Bass is the charismatic CEO of Autodesk, the leader in computer aided design software. I had the good fortune to go on a tour of his new workshop recently with my good friends and business partners from ConXtech.

First ConXtech is the space frame steel construction and technology firm that Bob Simmons and Kelly Luttrell launched nearly 10 years ago. ConXtech designs and builds the steel frames for large structures from hospitals, condos and office buildings to mining and refinery racks. And all this is designed with Autocad tools from Autodesk.

The Autodesk Workshop is on Pier 9 in San Francisco and is a shop where software and hardware meet. There are studios devoted to laser and water jet cutting, welding, woodwork, fabric labs, and computer controlled cutting machines. One of the most fantastic is an 11 axis mill that uses a drawing to cut out stainless steel or other metals in fantastical shapes.

Of course there is a lot of 3d printing and it is here where Autodesk is now making a stand as a hardware manufacturer with their own branded 3d printer. There are dozens of 3d printers of all sorts available today. There are a good many low-end machines used to print simple tchotchkes like toys and amusing food products.

At the other end of the market are firms like Siemens and GE who are growing metal and ceramic turbines in shapes not possible using traditional machining methods. Sintering, selective laser melting and other additive techniques are changing that industry.

Autodesk’s 3d printer, called Spark, can make parts of remarkable precision down to about 25 microns. Both the hardware and the software are open sourced. This is a critical aspect. By group-thinking the system it will grow like a wiki and is good for Autodesk and good for users.

Autodesk is famous for egalitarian public outreach. They make their software available free to students and teachers and the new shop is accessible by all Autodesk employees as well as a great many artists in residence working on projects of their own devise. Many of them are supported with stipends allowing them to even quit their day jobs and for a fixed period of time focus on the intersection of art, craft and society.

Marooned on a Desert Island...Sort of

This summer I found myself on a desert island with three lonely palm trees and no Man Friday to keep me company. Would I die of thirst? Would I be forced to eat my sandals? No, the sandals were made of rubber so that was out. Maybe a coconut from one of the palm trees? Hey, wait a minute. These trees are plastic. It seems the real ones keep blowing down so Richard Branson has put artificial ones in their place. Pretty funny.

Instead of perishing I hopped back in our launch and we sped the 100 yards to the dock at Necker Island in The British Virgin Islands.

Several years ago the man who launched Virgin Records, Virgin Airlines, Virgin Cola and countless other Virgin branded products ending up in what he no doubt thought of as a brand extension. His 74 acre paradise is what most folks envision a tropical island billionaire’s fantasy to be. There are flamingo ponds and a remarkable collection on other animals. When we were there the lemur population was exploding.

Lemurs are from Madagascar and they are very unlike other monkeys I have met. They are very affectionate, slow moving and even though they wear thick fur in the tropics they have no smell. They love to jump up on your shoulder and make eye contact. Their young cling to their backs and they are happy to have hold their babies.

Am I getting one? Well I’d like to but monkeys are not legal to possess in California though they are legal in many states and there is a vigorous trade online. We also can’t possess armadillos, pangolins, piranha, dugongs, elephants or flying squirrels. Well zebras and camels seem to be OK so that might be enough to keep me from moving to Texas. One can get special permits for lions and tigers but I think I’ll just dress up the dog.

Branson also has a pretty handsome giant tortoise collection. The biggest one was about 700 lbs and was as old as your grandmother or more. We were able to rub their heads and we tried to play with them. They move at the speed of a rock (on flat land) and have about as much personality. Still it is pretty cool to fondle their necks, which are actually made of tortoise leather.

Sir Richard or just Richard as he wants to be called had just arrived that morning and he is most convivial host known for hanging out with his staff and guests. The place is called a private island but you can actually rent one of the houses or the entire island. It goes for about $50,000 for the whole place for up to 28 guests (not including your personal staff such as your hair and makeup people) plus the usuals like food and gratuity. The resort is Balinese style and the main house looks like a movie set which it sometimes is. It is also pretty new, the original one having burned down from a lightning strike in 2011.

I’m not kidding about hair and makeup, some do come with these people. Personally I prefer to go native and never travel with staff though I probably should. In fact none of us paid for anything. We slowly walked out backwards and the Necker staff thought we were just arriving. This is the same technique I used to get of prison back in the 70s.

If you find yourself in the area you can visit the island as you are, or pretend to be a big shot. Just tell them you are a friend of Richard’s but make sure he isn’t actually there unless you are a friend of his. On the other hand he would probably welcome you with good cheer as he really is a right fellow.

Big Man On Campus

I was asked to speak to the students at Singularity University recently by Neil Jacobstein, the Co-chair of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics. I do a good many impromptu talks at Buck’s and in more formal setting from TEDx to Stanford but being asked to speak at Singularity University is certainly a highlight in my somewhat unconventional speaking career.

First a little history. Back in the spring of 2000 several folks from Yahoo came in for lunch and asked to meet me. I sat with them and they told me about a three day conference about the future they were holding with top brand managers for all over the country. Tim Koogle, Jerry Yang and the rest of the big dogs from Yahoo would attend as well as the top people in marketing from Procter and Gamble, Walmart, Taco Bell and dozens of other companies. This sounded interesting and it emerged they wanted me to come. Then it seemed they wanted me to give a talk. Finally they explained that they wanted me to be the keynote speaker to kick things off. I asked how long I had and what they wanted to speak about. They said take all the time you need and talk about anything you like. I have zero stress around public speaking so I said OK.

This did put me very much in mind of the Roman emperor Claudius who was installed more or less by accident. But hey, if they were paying for the mini bar I was game.

I don’t remember exactly what I said but I did have two costume changes and I got some laughs. It was just a few days later that the air went of the internet stock market. Yahoo dropped from $250 to about 25 and we all ran in from the rain under the banana leaves. Ahhhh, good times.

But now it was 2014 and I was at Singularity and these students (really carefully recruited seminarians) would be more skeptical. The height of irony is pretending to be yourself and being worried about being found out. Neil asked me to speak about the community focused around Buck’s and what I have learned during my tenure in The Valley. It is has been said that Buck’s is a place were a many businesses have had their origin. I like to say that the founding of a business is when the money meets the entrepreneur because before that it’s just talk and after it’s all work.

Singularity University is part think tank, part education nerve center, part incubator, and a place were the future is being invented. It gives a data jammed Graduate Summer Program and executive programs that are focused on teaching leaders to understand the technical, business, and ethical implications of exponential technologies (like AI, robotics, synthetic biology, and nanotechnology) that double in price performance every 18 months or so. The participants are encouraged to use these technologies to address humanity’s grand challenge problems (like illiteracy, global health, climate change, poverty, energy, security, etc.). I did talk about Buck’s, but what I found really compelling was my chance to ask some 80 super engaged men and women in their late 20s (who had been selected from a vast number of applicants from all over the world) what they thought the future held. One question I like to ask is, “Do you feel that preserving human life in its current form into the deep future is imperative?” To my surprise only about 30% thought this was important. But then they are attending Singularity University, after all.

Ray Kurzweil is the man most identified with the notion of the singularity as well as the University. He cofounded the university with Peter Diamandis of XPrize fame. Peter wrote the best selling book “Abundance”. The term singularity was first applied as the astronomical name of the event horizon at the edge of a black hole. It now also now refers to the juncture where machine intelligence meets or exceeds human intelligence, and the future becomes very hard to predict. Is such a thing possible? Well, Ray thinks it will happen in less than 40 years. Ray has accurately predicted many other events; so when he talks people listen.

Critics of this notion and of many other predictions can be heard to say, “This will never happen.” I have noticed that the impossible seems to fruit up shortly after being declared to be “impossible”. Of course timing is always the main issue. All those marvelous Star Trek inventions will show up given enough time. Gottfried Leibnitz predicted the arrival of the computer 300 years ago.

Me, I just had to make it through the student’s questions. Keep in mind we are now in the arena of big ideas. “What do you worry about?” one student asked me. There are sooo many problems to fret over, but the one that concerns me now is unemployment. I asked for a show of hands of who among them were creating new businesses and protocols that added more jobs vs. eliminating them. None. In spite of this, several spin out businesses from prior Singularity University summer programs have already created new jobs. Also, many at Singularity think exponential technologies will generate vast wealth, which could lead to a society willing to distribute some of this abundance. We shall see.

Aubry DeGrey was to follow me at Singularity. He proposes that the human body can be scientifically reengineered to live far longer than today. He is shooting for nothing less than to live forever but he is starting with 1,000 years (I must take better care of my skin). He is talking about the human body not the singularity. Hey Aubry, do you realize how hard it will be to get a table at Evvia then? Alternatively Ray proposes that we live in server farms - which is good because I like the country.

The Singularity University campus is located near the hollowed out corpse of the old dirigible base at Moffett Field. How elegant that this new enterprise emerges from the ashes of a failed dirigible technology. Soon, though, I expect Singularity will be moving from their physical campus into the cloud.

Most of the new acts that come out of Singularity will not work as businesses but as long as there is learning they will not be failures. A few of the spin outs may make a real difference either economically or socially. I count myself lucky to have been a tiny part of this noble enterprise.

Can you hear me in the cheap seats?

Micro Story – Bernie has breakfast

Bernie sat at his kitchen table and stared at the picture of the missing child on the milk carton. It was 2% milk though he didn’t mind what sort of milk he used. The child stared back. Then moving slowly the girl grabbed the edges of herself and very carefully peeled free of the container and stood before him on the table. “Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi. You’re my only hope.” Her hair looked funny. Bernie looked down at her and thought for a long minute and said, “I don’t know anyone named Kenobi.” and he brushed the cardboard girl to the floor and called his cat; who whisked her through his little door.

Bernie thought, “I really don’t care if the milk is 2% or whole milk. Either is fine.”

The Cote d’Azur and Fencing in Bulgaria

2014-01-23T15:50:00.000-08:00

Travel time once again. The ultimate destination this time was one of the corners of the earth - Varna Bulgaria, but first I had to kick a little of the jetlag by cooling my jets on the Cote d'Azur, or the French Riviera with my great friend Peter Friess who is a durable and frequent travel partner. Peter and I met up in Nice and we picked up a snappy VW convertible with a quaint 5-speed stick. From Nice we buzzed on over to Monte Carlo for the boat show. There were some very nice boats up to about 40 feet some costing in the 2 million range. Oh, these were the tenders for the actual boats which started at about 80 feet and went up to over 400 feet. The big ones can’t even get into the harbor.

THE NORTHER STAR

Peter and I set our sights on the Northern Star, a 250 footer with a nifty green helicopter on the aft deck. I asked the sales rep taking us through if the chopper would be included in the price. He said sure if you like. At 150 million it seemed they’d just toss it in like floor mats for a Volvo. This boat is 5 decks of overthetopness and can go wherever 52,000 gallons of diesel will take you. Frankly, buying the Star is a bit beyond this humble restaurateur but it can be chartered for about 700 a week in Euros in the summer in the Med or 700 in dollars in the Carib in the winter. That’s plus food, fuel and tip so toss in another 25 % taking you just shy of a million a week in either currency (they also take rubles). But it is real nice. Trust me.

From Nice we cruised down the coast in the prefect sunny weather to Saint Tropez. We got hooked up in Monte Carlo so one of our stops was Pallis Bulli which is Pierre Cardin’s ‘house of bubbles’.

HOUSE OF BUBBLES

It is fantasy of rubric-stone soap bubbles perched above the azure sea (as Homer might say [not the cartoon one]) Finally we arrived in Saint Tropez. This is a smallish town with the reputation for flash that is well deserved. We arrived to find it was the week of the J class sailboat race. These are 125 footers and include some of the great yachts of America’s Cup fame. Lionheart, Hunaman and Valshida were all lined up at the quay.

Lionheart, Hunaman and Valshida

I was overjoyed to see the boats as I had attended all but the last race of the recent America’s Cup in San Francisco. I did witness the final day via Skype with my family who were at son Dylan’s apartment in San Francisco where he has a view of the entire course of the event.

The food in France defies my humble powers of description. One night at La Penche I had a plate of tiny cuttlefish the size of the finger tips of angels. Each one of these squid-like cephalopods has a delicate crunchy center. As Homer would say. AGGGHHHHH. (Not the Greek guy, the cartoon character). We sat next to a very jovial couple from Holland who said they were in on their 36 foot sailboat. As we left the restaurant we saw them go aboard a giant sloop…oh - 36 meters. I told Peter if I had realized that, I would have stuck to them a little tighter.

Then off to Cannes where we had adjoining rooms at the Carleton and where the film stars gather for the festival. That isn’t why we stayed there. It was because during this year’s festival some thieves made off with 150 million US in jewels from the ballroom. (Queue Pink Panther music.) Cannes is pretty over the top. The streets are lined with Ferraris and Bentleys…sort of like Woodside I guess. But we don’t have stores that sell mobile phones for as much as a BMW. A salesman said with a straight face one was 35k Euros. Peter asked what made it special and the fellow said it has electroplated gold buttons. Too bad it was a Droid, or maybe…

We then flew to Geneva where Peter is the director of a rather special watch museum. Many of you will recall that Peter was the director of the San Jose Tech Museum for many years. He took that institution from a marginal operation to greatness and after 5 years decided he needed another challenge so he took the post as director of the Patik Philliup Museum in Geneva. He does this by commuting from the Bay Area. The owners of the museum wanted him very badly but he didn’t want to move from California so they accepted his offer to commute. And you thought your trip to SF was a chore.

TOURISTS ENJOYING THE VIEW IN SWITZERLAND

Peter is one of the world’s foremost experts on not just timepieces but also historical automatons. These tiny mechanical robots are the marvel of the pre industrial age. Picture a tree covered with birds all singing and turning their heads and flapping their wings. The birds are about an inch long and 300 years old. Peter is charged with not only running the museum but with acquiring historic pieces for what is already the greatest museum of watches in the world. He recently bought the watch owned by Marie Antoinette shortly before she became short herself.

My cousin Will Milne met up with us in Switzerland with his two daughters Helen and Ruth. Helen is a volleyball coach and a graduate student in Santa Cruz and Ruth just graduated from Santa Barbara after a stunning career as the four-year starting goalie on the water polo team. This fall she has joined the French professional team. I see more cuttlefish in my future.

RUTH AND JAMIS PARAGLIDE

After the museum visit the five of us went to the store where the new Patik watches are sold. I wear a Timex Ironman which really turns heads especially in that store. It helped that Peter was taking us through. The starter watch, the one you give for the bar mitzvah, starts at 30k. A new one sold recently for 5 million at a charity auction. I’m told they aren’t even waterproof.

Peter had to return to San Francisco and then Will, the girls and I tootled off to the Jung Frau. This is train trip up an Alp in the middle of Switzerland. I had never been to this part of the Switzerland and was amazed to learn that there are hundreds, maybe thousands of trains, gondolas and all sorts of clever contraptions in the Alps that allow for the vertical living they are famous for. Of course this is a new development and we were amazed that people could have inhabited such difficult terrain before the electric motor. There are lots of houses 4 and 500 years old plopped on the side of cliffs covered with grass and trees. It is this grass that sustains the cows, hence the milk and cheese. Historically the Alpine Swiss had just cows to sustain them. The average herd now is about 17 cows in Switzerland and half them live in the mountains. The government pays about $1,500 a year to subsidize each cow. Somehow the Swiss have turned this whole country into a miracle of sustainability. The power is nearly all hydo and the standard of living is so high that the government is considering a national minimum income. Not minimum wage - a minimum guaranteed income regardless of whether you work or not.

The place might look like a fairyland but the Swiss are pretty tough minded and have a lot of rules. All able bodied men are expected to do real military service and are required to keep a machine gun at home with ammunition…just in case.

But enough frolicking. We had work to do. Our work was to be sword bearers for Will at the International Fencing Tournament in Varna, Bulgaria.

Bulgaria is the poorest country in Europe. It is part of the EU but doesn’t use the currency. I expected it to be a sad, drab country. The airport in the capital city Sofia was modern enough. I asked the way to Varna and the car guy said just go out of the airport and turn right at the gypsy village and then he chuckled as we shared a joke about American’s thinking there would be such a rustic sight. But soon we saw there was no joke and we found ourselves driving through a slum of very unEuropean squalor. The city gave way to rolling countryside and village after village of collapsed barns and empty houses. We soon came across factories from the Soviet times, all abandoned. Some proved to be quite large, as in Detroit auto plant-sized, and the only employment seemed to be a gate guard or two running the remarkably clean and modern gas stations. The road we took was a country two lane highway with suicidal truck drivers who pass at tremendous speeds on blind curves. There is a great deal of animal roadkill and there are frequent roadside shrines to the vast number of traffic fatalities.

BULGARIAN FAST FOOD (NOT BAD)

It was about 250 miles across the country and there was only one city of any size. It was poor, partly abandoned and very grey though it’s claimed to be the intellectual center of Bulgaria. We sped on through. Finally after about 7 hours we entered the seaside city of Varna. Population about 300,000 in the winter and 600,000 in the summer. Some call it the Cote d’Azur of the Black Sea and they aren’t far off…if you don’t look too closely. It’s oldish and the pavement heaves a bit but there are modern hotels and lots of them. Most were open but the season was over so we had the run of the place. All up and down the coastline there are some tens of thousands of hotel rooms and villas. Most of the hotels and casinos were finished but the 2008 recession hit them hard and you see a great many that are half finished or completed but empty. It is eerie to see whole neighborhoods of empty buildings.

The fencing tournament was a multi-day affair so we settled into our top rated hotel. This is an ultra modern place called the Grafit and each floor had a different theme. The hotel is famous for having truly strange rooms with loose river stone floors in the bathrooms (necessitating putting towels down so you can walk on them) and clear glass walls for the bathrooms. The furniture was made of solid wood or stone and some of the tables weighed 300 lbs. The rooms were huge, the view of the Black Sea great and all for about $80 a night. The food in town was very good and so cheap it felt like stealing.

The world of fencing is taken very seriously by the participants who come from all over but primarily Eastern Europe. Last year Will took first place in his 50-59 year old saber division. This drove the other fencers simply wild because some have been doing this all their lives. He beat university fencing coaches, Olympians and has only been doing it for 11 years. Because he is relatively new to the sport compared to many he bested it really stung. Will is a design/builder of fine homes and is just finishing a house on Canada Road two doors north of Buck’s. He brings the same attention to excellence in his profession as he does to completive fencing.

During the preliminaries the girls and I amused ourselves by exploring the town. We discovered that there a good many stray cats and dogs. The dogs are cared for by the government and are all tagged and live on the streets. They were very happy to meet us as we brought them treats from breakfast. At one point we assembled a rather large dog posse and took our new friends to the center of town where they inexplicably attacked passing cars with startling ferocity. One driver tried bashing one of our dogs with his car door. The locals snarled at us with undisguised scorn which we though unwise of them as we had a half crazed posse of biggish dogs who would do our bidding.

The day came for the finals and we were wound up as tight as a tiny sweater. The field of 32 was quickly halved with Will winning his first bout 10-9. Too close for comfort. Then 8 more dropped with Will easily crushing the UC San Diego coach. Then he faced off with another American and sadly did not prevail. We saw one guy lose and hurl his equipment and berate the ref then apologize profusely and sputter a list of excuses. Will stoically took his beating and said that next year he would learn from his mistakes, train harder and take the gold again. Last year he was modest in victory (he took first) and this year gracious in defeat. He lost to the second place finisher so he is still one of the best swordsmen in the world and certainly the best in my family.

It was time to drive back to Sophia but this time we took the southern freeway. This gave us a very different view of the country. There were still closed factories but the south had a less desperate air even though the countryside has been severely depopulated. In the small towns there are people so poor they are seen collecting firewood in horse carts with the entire family. There are farms but curiously no farmers. The corn crop had just been taken in but there are no farm buildings and we realized that under collective farming the small farms had been wiped out and the large scale farms were mono cropping wheat and corn and once the harvest is in the whole place takes on a post apocalyptic feel.

OLD AND NEW

Our last night in Sofia we did the town and it was fairly vibrant. At one point we stumbled into a polite protest against the government. The police weren’t even interested.

Bulgaria, like the other eastern European countries, will come around and soon. The people are shaking off the communist past more slowly than most but I believe that Bulgaria is a good bet for success. Traveling there is so cheap it might as well be free. The people are nice and they have real beaches so I say, go Bulgaria!

Bulgaria is pretty far to go for fencing but next year’s tournament is scheduled to be in Mauritius. This is to the east of Madagascar and is the farthest place from Woodside you can go on earth before you are actually coming home.

UNGROUNDED - SolarImpulse - DRAPER UNIVERSITY

2013-08-21T14:45:00.000-07:00

By Jamis H. MacNiven

So I was sitting innocently at Buck’s one morning and these stylish folks from British Airways came in and invited me to come with them to England for a brainstorming session in the sky around the subject of STEM. Science Technology Engineering Mathematics. This is the touchstone today. 130 Important Silicon Valley Innovators, and me, met up at the Clift Hotel in San Francisco where Gavin Newsome addressed us and begged off the trip claiming that his wife was about to go into labor. Flimsy excuse if you ask me.

We broke into teams at the hotel and went into conference to come up with schemes to promote education, create products and foster more participation in STEM. Then together with the facilitators from IDEO and a support staff from British Airways we took busses to the VIP lounge at SFO where we boarded a new 747 that had been rigged for a 10 hour conference in the sky. We had 16 teams each charged with developing a plan to present to the United Nations on our arrival in London.

An example of the folks on board was Duncan Logan, founder of RocketSpace. Rocketspace is a collaborative workspace in San Francisco where startups rent space to be part of a frothy atmosphere conducive to emerging ideas. This plan is to break down the traditional walls isolating small firms and providing both physical space and a social atmosphere to make working more fun and increase connectivity. British Airways has some people in this space.

The event was called Ungrounded and is part of a larger initiative by British Airways to open the door to collaboration with the start-up community in Silicon Valley.

We were spread throughout the aircraft and as we developed our ideas we posted charts and slogans all over the walls and overhead bins. We roamed the aisles and eventually voted on the most popular ideas. Our group hatched the notion of creating mini maker-shops in places like Home Depot where kids could come and learn to use tools and discover techniques to actually build physical things. It was no coincidence that the founder of the Tech Shop, Jim Newton, was in our group. There are a half dozen of these Tech Shops across the country and one is in Menlo Park. There you can join like a gym membership and come in and use a wide range of tools from saws and lathes to 3d printers and plasma cutters.

The most popular ideas from our journey included a backpack wireless hotspot for travelers, a protocol to engage more women in STEM, and a notion called Init – a technical ingredients list (much like a food ingredient label) that is meant to educate consumers as to the exact contents of technical products. Brian Wong hatched the idea for Init.

Brian Wong is a kinetic 22 year old entrepreneur who founded Kilp. He dreamed up the idea of offering real world rewards for achievements

in the virtual world of gaming. For instance you reach a new personal best or beat a record and you get a coupon for a consumer product. Brands are wild to give Kilp the goods and in just 3 years he has 45 people sending out 100 million rewards a month. He told me he wasn’t a good student in school but I noticed he finished university at 18. During one brainstorming session a facilitator handed him a pen and he looked at it and asked, “Who still uses these?

Having finished our project we arrived in London where we were whisked off to the Langham Hotel, a 19^th century first class hotel. In the last 20 years they have put 250 million pounds into renovations and it looks it. The Langham is right across the street from the BBC’s Broadcasting House and is the only corner in all of London about which I know some history as I was once taken on a tour of the BBC.

Our hotel’s roof is the place where Edward R. Murrow broadcast during the blitz back in the War. It is also where author Arthur Conan Doyle and Noel Coward had dinner one night with Doyle’s publisher and from that meeting came the novel The Picture of Dorian Gray. Winston Churchill and Charles de Gaulle as well as Mark Twain were guests and now.…me.

That night we were invited to the Houses of Parliament where Baroness Scotland told us about how the place functions and asked if we might like a tour of the digs. We then proceeded to crawl all about the joint including a visit to the Houses of Common and that of the Lords. Down one random hallway I spied the Magna Carta in a flimsy glass case just begging to be lifted for display at Buck’s. Alas it turned out to be locked up pretty securely and besides it looked like a fake

We convened for breakfast and were treated with the 5-star elegance this place is renowned for. A crumb can’t fall to the floor without a tuxedoed waiter slipping a tiny silver tray under it (just like at Buck’s).

The agenda for the day following our in-air confab was a bit of mystery. Most of us had not looked up the name of the next conference as we just went where and when we were told to. A nice way to travel. Turned out we took a bus to the Olympic Village and joined up with other entrepreneurs and tech folks making us now about 250 people. On entering the auditorium we were treated to a talk by Richard Branson. And he wasn’t even the headliner. This was the G8 Innovation Summit.

Ron Dennis, the CEO of McLaren automobile told us about his new hybrid which gets 25 miles to the gallon while hitting 0-60 in about three seconds. It costs about 700,000 pounds so I’m not sure how many miles you would have drive to make this economical.

Now keep in mind most of us had no idea what was coming next so imagine our surprise when the Prime Minister of England came in and spoke

Really Jim, how big is it?

to us about trade, immigration and taxes for half an hour and then took questions. David Cameron really had the crowd in the palm of his hand. He is elegant and appropriate. He said he would like to stay longer but he had to go meet Vladimir Putin in a few minutes. One does not keep that man waiting.

June Sarpong UK TV star, Craig Newmark & some guy

One of the organizers of Ungrounded was also a member of a discussion panel, Celestine Johnson. She is a partner at Eric Schmidt’s new venture firm Innovation Endeavors and her area of concern is human rights in the supply chain, a topic both very new and quite pressing. Her panel consisted of women in the forefront of media, tech and venture. Among the topics they addressed was why there aren’t more women in STEM. The answer goes all the way back to elementary school. One study shows that women comprise about 35% of the workforce in tech, and yet women run businesses have a 12% higher revenue and 35% greater return on equity. Interesting stats, no?

Thomas Heatherwick, the designer of the new London bus as well as the stupendous Olympic torch displayed at the Games last year told us about his design process (I would not want to have to follow him as an Olympic torch designer).

After a break for lunch the topic was the DNA Summit (Decide Now Act) with more great speakers, including the Secretary General of the United Nations ITV who came to us by live link from Geneva. He commented on our Ungrounded summit singling out the winning ideas for specific comment.

Afterwards, in a TED Conference fashion, there was vigorous mixing of the delegates in the public areas. Me, I passed out face first on the lawn from jetlag.

After the conferences we were taken off once more, this time for a reception at the Royal Academy of Art. This was yet another mix of people and I ran into a rather lot of folks who were Buck’s customers. I teamed up with some Stanford medical researchers and people from Singularity University in Mt. View. We went to one of those tony restaurants you see in the movies called Downtown Mayfair right between Savile Row and Regent Street.

The next morning I was up early for a stroll around London town. It was Saturday and the city had yet to wake up. The skyline is changing dramatically with skyscrapers emerging all round including what will be when completed the tallest building in

Europe. London is definitely on. I recall a time in the 70s when it seemed that it would really become the dystopian Clockwork Orangian fantasy. But there has been a town and city there for about 2,000 years and it has never been more vibrant.

Over by Hyde Park they were setting up barricades for a parade later that morning for the Royals who were celebrating the Queen’s birthday. The Queen would have to see me another time. I had a plane to catch.

So why on earth would an airline go to all this effort and expense in a field they are not in business in? Well in England British Airways is big. The way we look to Google here Londoners look to BA so they feel that by creating strong ties to Silicon Valley they will continue to be thought leaders.

Draper University

Professor Draper

When I first heard that a new university had been founded I was immediately struck by the inevitability of this being the brainchild of long time venture capitalist Tim Draper. Tim has had an abiding interest in education for quite some time. A few years ago he spearheaded an educational initiative on the California state ballot and he is also the founder of the successful Biz World program, which teaches basic business ideas to elementary school children.

So it is a natural extension of his egalitarian ideals to found a university. He bought the Ben Franklin Hotel in San Mateo and remodeled it into a campus with facilities for about 50 students to live there for the two-month sessions.

The students come from all over the world and what they all have in common is that they want to be “in business”. This is not an MBA; it has a very different twist. Basically it’s about teambuilding, public speaking and a great environment to build confidence. Tim uses a superhero theme as the hook and he has the students break into teams for the duration. They work on individual and group projects culminating in final presentations.

Tim and his staff believe that creating a fun environment fosters creativity and team participation. Some of the activities can seem a little corny but try this: at Google new hires are expected to wear a propeller beanie hat when they first come aboard and are referred to as Nooglers. Imagine you are top of your class at Harvard and you have to dress in this less than hip fashion. It is partly to allow new hires to be greeted by the already arrived but it is also a way of saying “You aren’t as cool as you might think. Join the club.”

I have been fortunate to have been asked to lecture about my business history and that of The Valley and I have also worked with a number of students on their projects at Draper University.

Right now the whole affair is in the beanbag-chair phase but the learning is for real. People far more experienced than I have come forward to participate as mentors and lecturers. I sense the start of something durable and significant.

Most of the students have some college or have even graduated. They are bursting with ideas and high ideals. One of the outcomes of attending a semester at Draper University is to feel out the process of how it is to create a startup in an atmosphere far more forgiving than the much colder world of having to compete in the open market of ideas.

It’s often said that failure is in some sense good but I have always thought that failure is the second best lesson where there are just two lessons. So maybe instead of celebrating failure we should say that we are trailing ideas.

Draper U is great place to do just that.

SolarImpulse

Many folks recall that the magnificent SolarImpulse solar powered airplane was here in the Bay Area recently. I had the great good luck to not only meet the people behind this effort but to get somewhat involved. The pilots and other key members of the team were living in Woodside while they were getting prepared for the first leg of their round the world expedition.

The two principals behind this effort are the Swiss adventurers Betrand Piccard and André Borschberg. The goal is to circumnavigate the world using only the power of the sun. It is impractical, dangerous and wildly expensive. It serves no clear business purpose. It is simply a magical mystery tour, just like our excursions to the moon. Except for scaring the Russians, there was no practical application in taking a car to the moon and hitting some golf balls. I know you’re thinking Tang and Velcro. It turns out these products were not first connected with the space program.

What the moon adventure did was make being a scientist and an engineer, not to mention an astronaut, very cool and attainable goals for the youth of the nation. Compare that to the impact of writing the next cool iphone app and you might see a bit of difference.

SolarImpulse was founded on the idea that we can all soar beyond our preconceived limitations. This was the message the founders gave to the sponsors and they have believed it to the tune of well over a hundred million dollars. The entire enterprise is expected to cost 140 million. And the funders aren’t aviation companies either. Among the biggest sponsors are Bayer (a multi-national conglomerate making everything from aspirin to appliances) and Schindler (an elevator company). Schindler probably hasn’t improved its elevators much with the materials science behind the project but Bayer certainly has. One of the structural foams used in the plane was so revolutionary that it is now being used as insulation in millions of refrigerators.

It’s hard to say sometimes what the specific benefit of sponsoring something this esoteric is but many firms want to be associated with cool future-tense technology. And the fact is, one has to do something with one’s time and money. There are always folks who will say that feeding the poor is of first and only importance but we live in a world of vivid opportunities and the SolarImpuse team is adding to that.

The plane itself is a remarkable piece of construction. It has the density of a dragonfly. The wingspan is greater than that of a 747 yet it weighs as much as a Prius. This fragility makes taking off and landing with any sort of wind a challenge but after 6,000 miles it has performed flawlessly. The aircraft takes over 30 technicians to fly while holding just one pilot.

SolarImpulse has just completed the trip across the U.S. and now it will be retired. The next aircraft will be even larger so that it will be able to complete a trans Pacific jump that requires several days in the air without stopping. Bertrand is expected to be the pilot of that leg as he has been practicing deep concentration for long periods. Professionally he is a psychiatrist with a specialty in hypnotism and he says this project will make good use of this ability.

Bertrand comes from a long line of adventurers. His grandfather, August Piccard, and a partner were the first men to the edge of outer space when they flew to 50,000 feet in a balloon in 1932. August had to invent the pressurized cabin to accomplish this as well as the pillow-stuffed wicker crash helmet. It seems the German FAA required crash helmets for the flight so the pilots used the seats from the gondola.

Bertrand, Jamis, Andre and Grandpa in his fabulous hat

Bertrand’s father was the deep sea explorer who went to the deepest part of the ocean, 35,000 feet in 1960 in the Trieste bathysphere.

Bertrand set his own records including the first balloon flight to circumnavigate the earth. After 20 days he and his partner landed with only a couple of hours worth of fuel remaining. It must have been then when he decided that he would not take fuel on his next adventure.

Bertrand, some guy and Andre with grandpa w/helmet

If you’ve heard the name Captain Piccard from Star Trek it is a nod to this amazing family.

Andre has his share of accomplishments as well. He has been a fighter pilot on the Swiss Air Force. The Swiss have an air force? Yes, and it is a volunteer one at that. The Swiss are a peace loving people despite the fact that adult males are required to keep automatic weapons at home in case of an invasion. So yes, a volunteer air force. Anyway Andre is an engineer and has launched several tech companies. He is the chief developer of the aircraft and, with Betrand, is the co-pilot.

In 2015 the next aircraft will take our hopes and dreams on an around the world tour. Mine will be on board.

TED 2013,

2013-04-01T15:31:00.002-07:00

TED 2013 - Pope Benedict Moves to San Francisco - Viper Stormchasers -Vesta Restaurant Review - The Secrets of Silicon Valley a new book - Jamis's classifieds

by Jamis H. MacNiven

When I first wrote about TED 10 years ago the conference was like an energetic teenager full of bright ideas. Today it reminds me of a seasoned 30-something – experienced, respected and wise and cutting a wide path through the intellectual wheat fields.TED.com

Chris Anderson is the curator of this museum of thought. I was that when he first took over he looked calm enough but I think he might have been a little nervous about how it was all going to work out. It was terrific then but over time it has grown in self-recognition and the emergent world of TED eclipses all the other events I participate in. In fact TED has made Burning Man look somewhat dull. It certainly is less dusty and with the move to Canada next year less dusty still. I know, Canada? Who would have though that they would turn out to be cultural and economic heroes. We used to joke about Canada, now we want to be Canada.

TED consists of dozens of talks over five days. Short or long it doesn’t matter. You can tell a compelling story in 30 seconds though most are 18 minutes. My aim with this article is to drive you to the TED website, so I’ll hit a few highlights. I’ll dive right in with Open ROV, David Lang’s company making open source underwater Remote Operating Vehicles submarine kits. These ROVs can take your eyes to 300-foot depths and you get to build the ship yourself.

This was followed by a talk by Skylar Tibbit on self-assembling mechanical devices. Taking a page from Mother Nature, Skylar is exploring the step beyond 3d printing. A few years ago we had memory foam, but now visualize solar powered factory pipelines that squeeze their fluid contents to their destination.

Kevin Kelly, Stewart Brand, Carl Page and Felix Kramer

A video that really rocked me was follow the frog. Stop reading this drivel, look it up, now! I’m just sain’.

Edith Widder finally discovered the long rumored 30-foot plus giant squid. But squid cheat being 2/3rds tentacle and all. Still I wouldn’t want to meet one on a lonely highway. She discovered that the ROV’s being used in the hunt were always too noisy and once she sent a quiet one down the squid were all over the place. Ahh, the power of common sense.

Tony Hsieh (Zappos) is a regular a TED and is one of the real trendsetters in clothing and business philosophy. Who’s Tony wearing now? He wears Betabrand a mutual friend Chris Lindland’s company. Betabrand is hip but not tooo hip. Heretofore exclusively sold online Chris has just opened a new very unusual store at 780 Valencia in The Mission. I love the word heretofore, yes? Uptop!

Jennifer Grandville, the ex-governor of Michigan, had some electrifying ideas about the nation’s energy needs. I saw a strong Presidential possibility in her but discovered she was born in Canada. How hard would it be to the change the Constitution or maybe get annexed by Canada?

Robert Gordon came out from behind the curtain and told us the sky was falling. He is a well-respected economist who says that growth, innovation and prosperity are coming to an end (get that man a chair and nice cup of cocoa). He was in the distinct minority at TED. I feel that too many economists equate growth with prosperity. I am campaigning for increased prosperity but reducing the rate of growth.

Rodney Brooks brought Baxter, the workplace robot. It performed badly (but Rodney was cool throughout) because the lighting was a bit too dim so it needed some effort to cajole a few reluctant movements out of the little fella. Later Julia Sweeney quipped that it only took three people to try to coax the robot to move a single item from a table to a box in about 10 minutes. A real job creator this. Ha ha. Well, not so fast. The first aeronauts were a rooster, a sheep and a duck in a hot air balloon (still a crew that has never been bested) and with this strange beginning we are now looking at travel to Mars. Queue the Strauss score from 2001.

Speaking of Mars, Elon Musk materialized from the future to give us an update on his many mandates. Space travel plans are littered with crackpots. There is a team trying to fund an inflatable space hotel for tourists. Another wants to sell you a one-way ticket to the Red Planet. Elon is as far from crackpot as Edison is from Gyro Gearloose (of course Gyro’s stuff did work, more or less)

Richard Turere came to see us from Nairobi. Now 13 he crafted a way to keep the lions from eating the family cows in the city limits of Nairobi back when he was a kid of 11. After several false starts he hooked a solar panel to an old car battery to run blinking led lights that keep the lions out of the pasture. Lion Lights are being used all over Africa now. His invention was real and would have been just as effective if he had been a 30-year old.

There were other young inventors with more complicated tales. Taylor Wilson created a fusion reaction in his garage at 15 and now at 18 told us he could make a real dent in global warming and help foster world peace by feeding nuclear warheads to his pollution-free fission reactor. Well, maybe, but if he wasn’t so young would anyone listen? Bill Gates proposed a similar reactor a few years ago but Fukashima back-burnered that one.

Even younger is Jack Andraka who at 15 has had the boldness to say that he invented a $3 test that can detect pancreatic cancer and, because of early detection, yield a 90% cure rate. This is audacious and the crowd loved it. I loved it, but I spoke with a notable research scientist from Stanford who had his doubts because the kid is unpublished so his data is hard to review. He might be a Pasteur or Lister but remove his age as a consideration and his story is less compelling. Still, he was a magnificent and provocative presenter.

Bono came out to tell us about his charitable intentions. I have always been a little unconvinced by his rock star/poverty warrior bravado and the glasses make me suspicious. Bono took off his glasses, mocked his celebrity and made me believe. He is promoting ‘factivist’ thinking to counter demagoguery on his fight against poverty. Bono is a good man and a damn fine rock and roller.

Bono is old school But Amanda Palmer sure isn’t. She says she’s a mix of punk and cabaret. Amanda has the heart of Janis without the pain; the punch of Patty Smith without the attitude and a voice very much like Bowie. A little while back she decided to ask her fans to pay her through Kickstarter instead of buying her album. She hoped to raise a hundred grand to support her and the band. Her fans sent her 1.2 million because that’s what they thought she was worth it.

Amanda and fan

At one performance she crowd-surfed across the Weston lobby. No one wanted to offend by touching them ladyparts so she nearly ended up being baloney-sliced face-first in the piano. See her talk and her TED musical performance but I advise against looking at her overproduced MTV like videos online. Just because you and the band can dress all in white is not reason to actually do it, Amanda… unless you’re from Sikkim.

The staging at TED is a brilliant. This year it was a tree house theme and on one limb we found Ben Affleck. He said that TED felt like the Academy Awards for smart people but that he was going to be neither funny nor smart. He then became both, especially when imitating Al Gore. As we all laughed he said, “I hope Al’s not here”. He was. Ben brought the Congolese String Orchestra. These men were in formal tails playing western strings and made us all embrace this tragic place.

Alastair Parvin open sources punch-out-of-plywood wiki buildings; much like kid’s models but giving you the ability to print your own house. He needs to team up with Tibbits so it self-assembles and maybe Baxter can live there.

Danny Hillis says we’re at a point with the internet analogous to when singled celled organisms turned into multi-celled organisms. He warned us that there is no backup system for the internet and that it’s fragile and vulnerable. Just sayin’.

We saw some art from the forthcoming film called The World’s Largest Jumping Fish. It Looks like Life of Pi on LSD. It will be blowing minds at theaters near us soon. Bring Tupperware for your brain.

Meg Jay is a clinical psychologist who pointed out that a good many 20 somethings without a life plan had better get with it. She says some young folks are lazy maybe but some simply need some tools for success. She has a book.

Mitra Siugrat was this year’s TED Prize winner (a cool million). For some time he has been mounting computers literally in holes-in-walls in poor areas all over the world and then walks away. In one poor village in a Tamil-speaking region of India he returned a month after going live and talked to the children who were playing on the computer. He asked them what they were doing. These ten and twelve year olds said they were investigating the structure of DNA. Their one comment was that all the programs were in English, which they did not speak. He said, “Oh sorry.” They said, “No problem we learned English.” They are not being coached by professionals, but there is a team helping them. Retired grandmothers in northern England come aboard with video chat to encourage the kids. Not to tutor or test they just say “Good job, keep going.” This remarkable morphology has spread to other places. Get thee to the internet to see more.

Jamis with inventor of Glass Babak Parviz

The geeks from Google were wearing their Google Glass heads-up hyper reality project on their faces. This is the sort of thing that got you beat up for on the playground years ago but now it gets you a G5 jet. Geek respect happened gradually as this is a world were we didn’t even notice that our biggest celebrities had names like Arnold and Sylvester.

Mary Lou Jepson (cofounded One Laptop Per Child) is the Head of Digital Display for Google Glass. She proposed that it might soon be possible to bypass our verbal categorization of data and interact directly with images in our brains. Basically a new way to think.

De-extentiction. You heard it here first. Steward Brand and his wife Ryan Phelin believe that their new program called Revive and Restore can literally bring back extinct animals. This is not ivory tower conjecture. They say the science is close to bringing back recently departed animals. You’ve heard of the passenger pigeon? A boy with a bb gun killed the last wild one in 1900. But did you know that it was the most populous bird on earth and that it was hunted to extinction. It was also the biggest source of meat for the poor in America the early 19th century. Flocks were reported to be a mile wide and 300 miles long. In a few decades we ate every last one. It has been reported to taste better than chicken and I intend to find out if it’s true.

The very last one died in a zoo

Liu Bolin is truly the invisible man (run to your computer and look him up[wait no running you are already on your computer, right]) by making himself (nearly) invisible. Really he can do this. He speaks convincingly about political and social issues in a manner completely original and memorable. He can actually make himself invisible. I saw him do it.

Larry Lessig talked to us about how to equitably fund political races. It makes perfect sense so it will go nowhere. His work dovetails with Steven Johnson who just released a penetrating book about the new networked landscape in Future Perfect. Steven is a social scientist and he believes we are witnessing the old vertical power systems being pushed aside by social networks. Occupy and other movements represent what he calls peer progressive cooperation, an emerging model for the very structure of society. Occupy didn’t work you say? Not so far but the future isn’t done with us yet.

Again with the kids. Dong Woo Jang is a kid who picked up sticks at 14 in his Korean neighborhood and began crafting bows and arrows to examine the intersection of mathematics, wood, flight and craft. His many bows allowed him to see the metaphor and the reality of this most ancient tool. It is now overlooked but is indeed a member of the top-ten most important human contrivances of all time.

One presenter showed us new evidence that the alphabet might not have been invented in Biblos, present day Lebanon, but in upper Egypt considerably earlier. I’m an alphabet aficionado and so if this is true it’s BIG news.

Kees Moeliker of the Natural History Museum Rotterdam won the Ignobel Prize for being the first to document a case of homosexual necrophilia in ducks, he brought the a duck. It was dead. He’s kidding...or is he?

N. Korean activist Hyeonseo Lee came from privilege and as a child was told that the starving people in her country were diseased and there was nothing that could be done for them. Her family fell into disfavor and they escaped through China to Vietnam and finally to S. Korea which was only a few miles, but a universe, away. A moving tale of despair and triumph.

Eleanor Longden moved us too. She has schizophrenic tendencies and has a talkative team in her head that first tried to kill her and then helped get her through school as she finished her PhD. Mostly folks with this diagnosis fail at life but she is making those voices work for her.

Neil Gershenfelt is examining the boundary between bits and atoms in the Fab Lab at MIT. He says the digital revolution is over and we won!

There is so much more. Much, much more online.

Pope Benedict Relocating to California

The long lonely highway

It’s official. The recently retired Pope Benedict (or is it back to Ratzinger once again) is moving to a nice three story Victorian in the Twin Peaks neighborhood of San Francisco. I’m told he has joined the Powerhouse Gym on Market to keep those abs buff. I am not making this up. The ex-pontificate is driving the Popemobile from Miami to San Francisco because he wants to see America up close.

He called me in March from the Holiday Inn along Alligator Alley in Florida. He told me that the alligators were very nice if a bit snappy. He said he was disappointed to discover that his car would only do 9 miles an hour but he said he was looking forward to cruising into Nashville and eating fried grizlin’ and possum pie at Minnie Pearl’s Gud Eats.

Expect the ex-pontifcate to be pulling into Buck’s sometime in the fall.

Restaurant Review

Why are you eating here when you could be eating at Vesta? Oh right, you can’t get in because it’s too busy. This is the first restaurant review I’ve ever done for the competition. Well they aren’t really competition. As with the restaurants in Woodside, we’re all friends.

Peter Barone and his wife Courtney opened Vesta at Broadway and Main in Redwood City last year. It is his parents and my old pals Roy and Rose Barone’s old location, which they ran in the 70s and 80s across from Margaret and my construction office.

Now all our kids are the biz and let me tell you, these kids are schooling us parents.

Vesta is truly amazing. First, they close Sunday and Monday and make less money so have conquered one of the biggest limitation of the business, burnout. The staff is convivial as heck but the big news is that the food is simply spectacular. I’ve eaten at Noma in Denmark, called “the best restaurant in the world” I’ve uncovered insider places from Toulouse to Tokyo but in this great big world I’ve never eaten at a place (that my kids didn’t own) with better food than Vesta. It’s pizza, salad and veggies. But with such flair and love that has forced me to recalibrated my understanding of this cuisine. Do-not-miss the sausage, honey, green chili and mascarpone pizza. Oh I had my doubts about the honey but trust me; this is the best single food anywhere. It is.

This isn’t just me playing nice. Check out their well-earned ratings online.

I can tell you this, though. The art collection is pretty weak. Thank goodness.

MacNiven Boys in San Francisco

Dylan continues to captain the restaurant group in SF with his brothers, Tyler and Rowan. The Woodhouse Fish Co. brand is growing and West Of Pecos, in the Mission, is already a year old. Overseeing the kitchens is corporate chef August Schuchman. August is on fire (in a good way) and I predict that he will be a name in years to come. That is a single name like Gordon or Wolfgang. He’s that good.

Viper

By Jeff Shardell (Buck’s first guest author ever)

Dustin and Jeff

Two years ago, I was perched on a knoll top just outside of Philadelphia, Mississippi with video camera in hand. No, I wasn't filming butterflies or bird migrations, I was filming a tornado. This wasn't just any tornado, it was a behemoth - an EF-5 tornado (picture Tornado7) barreling directly towards me at 60 miles per hour. With self-preservation kicking in, every fiber of my being was telling me to run as fast as I could in the opposite direction. I remember thinking to myself "Why in the %#^%$! am I putting myself in this situation, yet AGAIN?" The path that lead me here was a bit circuitous but as Steve Jobs is famously quoted as saying, "You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards."

Jumping back in time, I was your typical tech guy, holding a number of senior business positions at a variety of Bay Area companies. My most recent was running business development at Google from the early 2000s until 2009. Even though technology is what put food on my table, I always had a latent passion for weather. I spent my early years growing up in Florida and was that crazy kid (every neighborhood has one) who ran outside to watch the thunderstorms roll in while others were taking shelter. In undergrad, I studied meteorology and even though I transitioned to business, my excitement for extreme weather never left me.

Crimineeeee!

Fast forward a bit after leaving Google when I convinced a friend of mine to come storm chasing with me. Landing in Denver with nothing more than a rental car (full insurance policy of course!), laptop and data card in hand, we embarked on a week of chasing. After days of crisscrossing a multitude of flyover states in search of storms, we finally captured the full lifecycle of a beautiful tornado in the Comanche Grasslands in southeastern Colorado (picture DSC_0139) and I knew I was hooked. When I got back, I started trying to convince everyone who would listen and who was adventurous enough to come storm chasing with me. When I exhausted my friends and family, I got connected with the guys on the Discovery Channel's Storm Chaser show and started chasing with them.

Now, me and my good friend and chase partner Dustin Feldman decided to double down and create the only high-end VIP storm chasing business in the world - Viper Tours LLC.

We chase in a specially designed Ford Raptor and our goal is to get our guests as up-close and personal to a tornado as possible - without actually getting sucked in! We've even signed on with a TV production company and will be filming a pilot for a reality TV show about our business and our adventures during the chase season. If you are interested in experiencing the thrill of a lifetime, visit vipertours.com for more information - or just reach out and say hi. Oh, and in case you are wondering what ever happened with that EF-5 tornado - well, it veered off it's track in the last few minutes and thundered harmlessly by.

I have seen nearly 50 tornadoes over the past few years. What keeps me coming back? Well, there is nothing like experiencing this powerful but beautiful force of nature. Once you feel the wind blowing through your hair, the rain and hail on your skin and the smell of wet summer wheat fields, all the while a funnel is being born in front of you, you know you are witnessing one of the miracles of life. As Haruki Murakami said, "When you come out of the storm, you won't be the same person who walked in. That's what this storm's all about."

The Secrets Of Silicon Valley

Now on sale at Buck’s bookstore (The Smallest Bookstore In The World) right here.

I’ve read all the books about The Valley. This one is by far the best and not just because of the couple of flattering pages about me. It is a solid work with insights from 100 years ago up to 2013 of the Valley’s tech industry. If there is one book you should read about our little Valley of Surprises it is Deborah Perry Piscione’s new book.

Classified ads

I’ve decided to get rid of much of my stuff. I’m not talking about the stuff at Buck’s but the junk I have at home so if you know anyone interested in the following let Jamis know.

· 1929 Springfield Phantom Rolls Royce. This is has had just two owners, just me and the countess. It has 7,000 original miles but need an alignment. $975,000

· Jivaro shrunken head collection. These are pretty rare. Six heads including the “Spaniard” Juan Calderon. Perfect if, somewhat shrunken, condition. $67,000 each or 300k takes them all.

· Henry VIII suit if armor. This is probably technically the property of the British Crown but we’ll just keep it between us. This from his fat period. 12 million or will trade for Florida real estate.

· Set of golf clubs. $75.

Why I don't worry about the debt - View Inc. and Will Milne

2012-12-04T16:21:00.000-08:00

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WHY I DON’T WORRY ABOUT THE DEBT

By Jamis MacNiven

Have a look at the ‘debt clock’ http://www.usadebtclock.com/ and you will see the dial spinning at over 2 million dollars a minute. Real dramatic.

This made some folks jumpy during this most recent election season and it took up at least 50% of the oxygen. And still does. Let’s pick this issue apart. OK, first my credentials. None, but hey, my ideas are at least as good as the collective opinions about this issue because, like noise canceling headphones, there is so much disagreement that there seems to be no single set of facts. Just relentless buzzing. (See Alan Greenspan the ex-head of the Fed who told Congress in 2011 that after 40 years he didn’t know what he was talking about) Well, I want to take your worry about the debt away and replace it with a bigger worry.

First, the debt is often compared to the GDP as if that comparison had any relevance. (Look! 50 SUVs are the weight of a grey whale!) As we shall see the debt can be compared to something but it isn’t the GDP.

A government’s purpose in a free society is to make a reasonably safe environment for us to live our lives. We come together and forge an agreement to operate with a set of rules. Then we spend the rest of the country’s existence fine tuning the agreement.

Some folks in this country are always trying to figure out what the Founding Fathers had in mind. Ha-larious. Why do we care what these folks from another age might feel today? (I think they are so beloved by some people because they carried guns) Some say we have a pact with them. We don’t. We have a pact with the Constitution. Big difference.

One job of our government is to raise money and manage some of the social systems like providing for the common defense, running a post office, conducting a census and so on. The Constitution was immediately seen as incomplete so we amended it before the ink dried and have been doing so ever since (the Supreme Court rulings have the force of the Constitution). Nearly all of us agree that the government should manage a lot of activities. One thing it is charged to run is a treasury system and with that comes the ability to create debt and print money. Cool, free money!

So the national debt is 16ish trillion (and lots of state and local debt too). (In pennies the weight of 17.5 million grey whales, big ones.) People are heard to say you can’t live beyond your means at home so how can a government? If you go overdrawn you will go bankrupt they say. True, but the federal government isn’t a household on steroids. It can print money, go to war, make some pretty amazing rules - all things you can’t do at home. If we inflate the money supply we can reduce the debt. I’m not suggesting doing this because, as I contend, the size of the debt doesn’t matter anyway.

Some say we can reduce the debt by creating millions of new high paying jobs. If we buy more stuff we will grow our way to prosperity. Even Robert Reich an avowed lefty at UC Berkeley says this. But from where I sit it seems as demand grows the things are shipped in from shored long ago. What about the balance of payment to other countries and a weaker dollar? Well we are actually expecting oil independence and even export soon. Really, that’s what they say.

Why do I say worrying about the debt shouldn’t keep you up? Because the debt is merely a bookkeeping tool whereby one party borrows money and another party is paid interest. Why borrow money? Ideally one borrows to have access to the utility value of something like moving into a house decades before it’s paid for. It is also used to fill in gaps in the ratio between revenue and the actual cost of things. Last year the insane argument about not raising the debt ceiling might have made sense except it was used to pay outstanding bills, not for new work.

There was also a lot of noise about China holding our debt like a parent who might withhold your allowance. Well, they already hold the debt and it can’t be ‘called.’ (They actually only have 8%.) The mechanism is - we send them money and after the kleptocrats skim off about half they build things like factories to make more stuff. We then buy that stuff and send them yet more money. (Talk about a tool to promote world peace!) 4 trillion of the debt is owed to the Federal Reserve and 2 or so to Social Security. Now I’m no economist but doesn’t that mean we owe much of it to ourselves?

It looks like we will continue to borrow money to pay ourselves the interest on borrowed money but eventually even a hall of mirrors fades away and this magic well will run dry. The result will be to write the debt off as a bad loan and our credit will go down the drain. What will happen then? We will be forced to live within our means which is what everyone has been clamoring for. People say, oh, we will become Greece. Austerity! Yes indeed. Or maybe we call it sustainability.

“We can’t have a dystopian future - we need our comforts!” yell the consumers. Well the future is here. This $4,000 chair promises to make you happy. All 300 pounds of it which is what the average American will soon weigh. Sure looks like the chair from Wall-e.

So if I say the size of the debt is of little relevance and a comparison to the GDP isn’t effective, what is? We now actually have a use for the whales and SUVs. We have to compare the debt to all the stuff.

The functional debt on a car, a freeway, a whale or anything that exists is zero according to the universal law we call reality. This means that if it exists and is useful the universe doesn’t care if there is paper debt against it because it is actually here. If there happens to be a paper debt applied to it that is a characteristic like a tree casting a shadow, but it is of no consequence to the thing itself.

The ‘stuff’ exists so the universe says it is completely paid for. I’m talking about both simple things like an apple and complex systems like weather. Let’s start adding up the utility value of everything and for simplicity sake let’s use just planet Earth and divide by the USA.

We have to add all the cropland, sure, and all hose Beanie Babies but we also have the infrastructure like the dams and waterways, uniform weights and measures, and less intangible things like the protocol of driving on the right.

So what’s it all worth? Digging around on Wikipedia gives a value of the Earth (for insurance purposes no doubt) of 42 quintillion (18 zeros) US dollars. So if the America controls, say 25% of the world’s value then our share is about $10 quintillion. This makes the national debt about a millionth of the value of all our stuff in just the US and that isn’t counting the sunshine. At this point most of the readers will assume I’m kidding but I am quite serious. I know the 18 zeros is a made-up number isn’t the real value actually far higher. In fact, priceless.

Clearly if we raise the national debt it will have little impact on the ratio. What will wreck the formula is to devalue the stuff. We all know by heart the list of how this might happen. Asteroid, check. GMOs, check. Nuclear war, check. Pestilence, check. These things might happen but probably not. What about global warming? Were you watching NYC and New Jersey becoming a surfer’s paradise? Oh, it’s happening. The big storm cost tens of billions sure, but make New York City uninhabitable below the third floor and watch the value of these places decline rather more.

By this point some are agreeing. Others are disagreeing and thinking I’m taking a leftist position. Well if reality is tilted to the left I guess that’s true but really it need not be partisan issue. Am I so pure and above the fray? No, not at all. I’m gobbling resources with everyone else even while trying to cut back.

So maybe I’m all wet but this is a country where (according to the National Science Foundation 2011) 32% of Americans believe in magic numbers so I hope to appeal at least to these folks.

I guess this all sounds pretty nuts. Maybe I’ll get one of these chairs after all.

VIEW INC

The walls at Buck’s are covered with art and technology from an earlier age of adventure and discovery, but much of the real action in science and technology has now moved to an atomic and molecular level. My friend Aymeric Sallin leads a Venture fund called NanoDimension (anchored in Zurich and Menlo Park) and deals with all sorts of nano-sized technologies. This technology involves tiny elements harnessed to big projects. Aymeric chose this industry to focus on because, as a physicist, he gets it. He supports companies as they move atomic processes from lab to fab.

Here in the Valley many new firms focus on software; NanoDimension backs businesses that make stuff out of atoms. Their latest project, View Inc., involves the slight movement of an ion on the molecular level which changes glass from clear to variable tint. This infinitesimal realignment now is poised to disrupt an entire industry.

We all lament the disappearance of American manufacturing jobs to other countries. By backing View Inc. a consortium of VCs, including NanoDimension, has created hundreds of jobs in the USA and will soon add hundreds more. I was privileged to have an inside look at this remarkable technology while it was still in stealth mode.

The folks at View have built a plant in Mississippi to manufacture dynamic window glass. Office buildings, hospitals, restaurants, homes and countless other buildings are wrapped in glass. Take a multi-story office, the kind you see throughout Silicon Valley and you will (I will never see them the same way again) notice that nearly all the blinds are half or all the way down. Funny, you finally work your way up to the edge of the building, a corner office even, and then immediately pull the blinds down so you can see your screen. And down they will stay.

View manufactures glass that can be dimmed automatically in bright sunlight or controlled directly by the user. When combined with dimmable lighting and tight zone control of the temperature you can create an ideal environment and still see out the windows. Dimming the glass also keeps direct sunlight out thereby reducing the AC load, a big factor for modern buildings. On energy savings alone this product pays its way. But the real benefit isn’t about money but about the human experience. We have a deep primal need

to scan the horizon. It has been well documented that a view makes people happier, more productive and in hospitals, speeds patient recovery.

But hasn’t this glass been around for a long time? Yes, 40 years and its inventor is an emeritus advisor to View. But dimmable glass has never been available on a commercial scale. To learn how to manufacture this at scale

--> To learn how to manufacture this at scale Dr. Rao Mulpuri and his team worked with Seagate and repurposed a disc manufacturing facility in Milpitas – it was an efficient and cost effective move and represents a re-purposing so indicative of Silicon Valley. In the glass industry, the acquisition of this plant is on a par with Elon’s score of the Ford plant for Tesla in Fremont.

The View team managed to recycle it for their R and D facility where they perfected the technology before building their fabrication plant in Mississippi. Mississippi was so excited to see them show up that they all went gigging for gators and attracted them with huge incentives and support. From this plant they will supply not only North America but Europe as well, where the energy conservation requirements for buildings are far more stringent.

The technology required to manufacture a double pane, dimmable window that can be up to 5x10 feet is daunting. But making it is just part of the equation. With this sort of product you can’t trickle into the market for testing. It’s more like building a bridge. In other words you can’t even sell your first window until you put the entire organization together with a capacity to produce huge quantities of the product.

Recently the first twelve windows were installed in the lounge of the W Hotel in San Francisco and in a very real sense each window cost tens of millions.

View and its VC backers have spent years helping move this disruptive new product into an untested market in dicey times. These people have guts. Silicon Valley style all the way. Viewglass.com

LOCAL WORLD CHAMPION WILL MILNE

Who’s the best saber swordsman in the world between 50 and 59 years of age? My cousin - Will Milne! That’s right, he just returned from Austria where he won the gold medal in the Veteran World Championship.

Modern fencing, also known as Olympic fencing (to distinguish it from historical fencing) is divided into three sports depending on the weapon; foil, epee or saber. Foil and epee are all about poking the other guy with the tip of the blade in order to score a point. The tip of the blade has a button switch on it so when your opponent gets “stabbed” you score a point. No poke, no point. Saber is different. With saber you can hit with any part of the blade and a light comes on. Saber is all about slashing, cutting, lunging and attacking. Like a free-for-all with car antennas. All this takes place in a couple of seconds.

Will has been saber fencing for about 10 years. By most measures he is a hobbyist in that he hasn’t been at it his whole life, unlike some of the fencers that he conquered at this year’s Veteran World Championship. So what kind of tournament is this? Well, the last US person to win the tournament was Ed Korfanty in 2006. Ed is the current saber coach for the Women’s US Olympic Team. Remember the US flag bearer in London, Mariel Zagunis? She was the one with the big smile, the woman who won gold in Athens and Bejing? She’s one of Ed’s students.

This is Will’s second year on the US Veteran National Team. Two years ago the tournament was held in Croatia and he came back a disappointing tenth place, a real letdown. He says he lost to a screaming Italian with an entourage who were cheering and waving towels and generally being Italian. His excuse for losing? “I panicked”. Not this year when he brought back a gold medal so large it came home in the hold. Will says one critical difference this year was that US Fencing Association sent along a coach for the athletes, none other than Vladimir Nazlymov. What, you don’t know the name? Well, he fenced for the Soviets in four Olympics, winning six medals (three of them gold) won ten world championships, was coach of the Soviet Olympic team and then immigrated tothe States where he became coach of the US team. Oh, him. Says Will, “I wouldn’t have won without Vladimir. It’s a lot easier to stay calm with a coach like him on your side.”

When I asked Will how it felt to win, he amazed me with his perspective. He said that when you win you don’t have to tell a story about how you nearly won, how the guy who beat you was a ten times winner of this or that, or how, if not for a loose floorboard or any of a million other reasons, you would have won. When I asked him how it went in Austria he said simply – “I won.” Winning needs no clarification. He said the best part was standing on the top of the podium with the silver and bronze medalists below him as they played The Star Spangled Banner. Nothing like rubbing it in.

Not that all this has been easy. A few years ago Will took a blade through the hand, and not a slight cut either. It cut his extensor tendon. He lost some function in his sword hand, yet even with this he is the current world champion. How is such a thing possible? Will says much of it is about controlling stress. If you can be the one swordsman in the room who isn’t panicked and spinning out mentally, you’ve got the edge.

This might seem like a mildly interesting recreational pastime except that Will brings this same sense of calm to his profession. Will is a homebuilder - Milne Design and Build. This is a field fraught with tension. Homes in our area are custom made productions not unlike motion pictures. There are good ones and less good ones but nearly always they are really stressful to produce. I know this because I used to be in the business, homes, not movies. Back in 1979 when Will was a teenager he worked for me as an apprentice on Steve Jobs’ house. This is pretty funny as it was only my second job ever and I was a pretty green builder. I was certainly in no position to teach much, having just arrived on the scene myself.

Will is far better at his craft than I ever was. He knows what he’s doing, sure, but the real reason his projects run so smoothly is that he’s always calm. I was on one of his job sites in Woodside a few years ago on the last day of construction and even though there were dozens of people everywhere, and the client too, he took it all in stride. Will specializes in fine residences in Atherton, Menlo Park and Woodside. One of his projects is under construction two doors north of Buck’s on Canada Rd.

I asked him about similarities between fencing and building and he said that in most respects they’re very different. Building is collaborative and takes lots of time and patience with input from numerous sources. Fencing is fast, instinctive and individual. Primal. Hit or be hit. And the best way to hit rather than get hit? Don’t panic. I do see a lot of parallels though. On his jobs nobody panics.

Next year Will is going back to Europe and the rumor is the tournament is somewhere in Bulgaria on the Black Sea. He’ll be defending his title against the Russians and Bulgarians, the French and the Germans, and yes, the screaming Italians. Will he slash and cut his way to the top a second time? We shall see.

Dinner in Denmark

2012-08-15T16:27:00.000-07:00

For some years those in the food community have been talking about the magical cooking at el Bulli in Spain and as a result this restaurant had been called the best restaurant in the world. Maybe yes, maybe no, but this much is clear - it was the hardest reservation to land for sure. Easier to get into Stanford. Well the chef decided that being open 6 months a year was too much so he said, “How about no months open?” Take that! So he took himself off to Harvard to teach and now another restaurant is the hot place - Noma in Copenhagen. Is it the best? Maybe? But right now it is the hot place to go so go we did. Since we went all the way to Denmark we thought we had better try other impossible places to get into. I went with Margaret my wife and as many know her at Buck’s - the substance behind the flash - me being the flash. We went with Peter Friess the recent director of the Tech Museum in San Jose and his airport-museum designer wife Birgit Binner. I was to handle the food arrangements and Birgit would suss out the corners of Scandinavian Design.

A friend in Copenhagen managed to get us into Noma on a Friday night a 7 o’clock. I really hadn’t expected this so it was a terrific surprise. The dining experience at Noma is ridiculous, spectacular, enchanting, overpriced, hilarious and a real deal considering the creativity and time spent making sure you have a night to remember. The web is bristling with opinions on this. I can tell you this. I had 23 courses and the food ran from OK to you’ve got to be kidding? I’m convinced that tasty food isn’t actually part of the dining experience at Noma. It’s true that I haven’t got a palette turned to Nordic on the dial but like any art, Noma gets to be judged by the common man and no one is more common than me. I wanted to love the food on all levels and I give them high marks for invention but a failing grade on flavor. The service was predictably warm and compelling which included a great deal of give and take with the international staff. The starters featured such things as fruit leather wrapped around pork cracklin’ to resemble, well pork cracklin’. There was scallop jerky. A plate of fried moss and a clever mussel or rather a faux mussel with real meat and an edible fake shell. There was a smoked game bird egg in a box of smoldering hay and, a real crowd pleaser, a donut hole with an anchovy stuck through it. It is at this point in the meal that the Russian billionaires generally get up, pitch a pile of cash on the table, and go looking for a steak. I’m not kidding this has happened repeatedly. There is plenty of bread though and great bread and heavily salted butter not the pale white lard-like stuff some trendy places give you in America.

The entrees were equally obtuse. At one point they brought us each a sizzling cast iron skillet and directed us to each cook a hens egg and give it dollops of roadside weeds. I think this a nod to hobo cooking. I was half expecting to be asked to heat up some beans in a can over a fire made of tire shreds. One of the latest restaurant trends is to take photos of food while dining. Chefs and restaurant owners are divided on this as there can be flashes going off all round but they are cool about it at Noma and owners would be well advised to give in on this trend, as it seems to be here to stay. The dishes marched at us relentlessly until we were ready to surrender but on they came in their multitude. One of the final courses was a dessert specialty of caramel blended with bone marrow in a section of cow bone. I thought they were kidding but no, it was really as promised. Smelled like a slaughterhouse. We were with fun people doing something decidedly odd so a very good time was had. Denmark is very civilized and strictly modern. In fact they invented Danish Modern though that’s from the 50s. Our hotel, the Radisson Blu, was the particular center of the action when we were there. On our arrival we saw a good many cops with guns. I thought I was home or at least in Italy but it was just the arrival of Hu Jintao the president of China who was there to tour the Carlsberg beer plant. They had cleared the top 5 floors and we saw the leader and his pack several times. I thought we hit it off but he never calls, he never writes. We went to the world famous Louisiana Museum on the outskirts of Copenhagen. They just slap themselves silly with the rich irony of naming the place after our state.

They find this wildly funny, I think. They aren't big on actually laughing. The hit of the show, which you really must see, is 32 big photos of some big fat guy smoking a cigarette. Really, once you get over a dozen it becomes pretty funny but I don’t think it was meant to be funny. I looked long and hard and tried to extract the reason or the meaning. The whole affair seemed meaningless. No doubt there are many who would bring meaning to it and I think that the art and very smoothness of Scandinavia is often a canvas on which to drape your own thoughts. It isn’t as if we don’t do plenty of this in America. In the 60s there was a big movement to display blank canvases. Well they weren’t exactly blank they were painted flat white. They sold for a lot of money. We never figured out what the Danish Kroner exchange rate was but I think that a bill that reads many thousands is not a good sign. And what is with tipping in Scandinavia? It is clearly written on the bill that the tip is included. I finally figured it out. The natives are a bit cagey, as they don’t want to spoil your fun, so the practice seems to be: tip lavishly beyond the amount on the bill if you are an American. If you are local you leave enough to buy half a ride on bus. Then it was off by car across a few hundred miles of Swedish countryside. It quickly dawned us that there is a lot of wood and water in Scandinavia and everything not composed of these two substances is made of rock. Billboards, junkyards, amusement parks and shopping centers don’t fill the landscape like here at home. Stockholm was a revelation. Easily one of the most compelling cities and I’ve been to. It’s a Baroque confection with many buildings dating from when it was a leading power 400 years ago. It never seems to get dark, the weather is perfect, everyone has a job, from the apple cheeked Swedish maid selling strawberries in the farmers markets to the sharply dressed ship stewards on the many watercraft. They really are a beautiful people. Many of the women quite tall and a lot of men are 6’6” and more. They are simply gigantic. And I don’t think they ever die. We met our friends David and Hi-jin who live part time in Half Moon Bay and part time in their penthouse overlooking Stockholm, as Hi-jin is Swedish. They are both artists and have done quite well. Hi-jin cooked one night and we ate as the night tried, without much success, to fall. The next evening we all went to a very elegant restaurant called F12. There the food was elaborate, tiny and inventive. One thing you can say is that the Scandinavians, like the Japanese, eat like one should. Very little red meat, a lot of fish and small portions. People in these countries bike for serious and the bike lanes are sacrosanct. It you are an uneducated tourist you tend to wander into them and the tinkling bill of an approaching bike belies the freight train insistence of these speeding vehicles. And what about the dark Scandinavian soul? I fully expected to witness people sobbing at the meaninglessness of life jumping of bridges in quantity but if there is shadow over them they never showed it to me. Even in the bike lane struggle they warned us with great courtesy. Everyone we met was smiling and of course they all speak English. I’m told the winters are long and bleak but that’s why Walt Disney invented Florida so with prosperity, and they are very prosperous, comes less depression. Peter found us an amazing hotel on a small island that was a renovated military barracks. Long and narrow, eclectic and wonderful. Most of our island was wrapped with the most stunning marina imaginable.

There were over a hundred houseboats all along the stone quay with signs illustrating to their histories. There were tugs, barges, military recon vessels, light ships and fishing boats. Many were in the 100-foot range and several were from the 19th century. All immaculate. This is the most aquatic of cities and there are thousands of inhabited islands so ferries and freighters abound. And get this, they are connected to the sea but the Baltic is so far away that the salt content is less then 1% and there is no tide. This is great for preserving ships. This was certainly the case with the Vasa the most visited site in Scandinavia. The Vasa is the 226-foot flagship of the Swedish navy that was launched in front of an admiring throng in 1628. It must have looked magnificent for the few minutes it floated but it proved to be a bit top heavy (must have been that last piece of bone marrow candy) and it fell over and sank in the harbor.

Top heavy? Since when are 700 sculptures of the royal court, medieval kings, roman emperors, Egyptian deities and fanciful animals spreading from water line to poop deck top heavy? Warships of today generally deemphasize art in favor of better ballast. An inquest resulted in finger pointing in a circle until it landed on the ship’s designer where it belonged. He had conveniently died and there it ended until the 1960s when the ship was lifted and went through a decades long preservation process. Today the wood is slowly disintegrating due to it’s high sulfur content and is expected to dissolve in the next 100 years so you should go soon. David and Hi-jin were making a movie called Unspoken when we showed up one night and we became part of it. Each of us in turn stared silently at the camera for a few seconds. No special effects, no orphans or Penguins, very Scandinavian in its simplicity. I expect the fat guy smoking a cigarette will be in it. See the progress at davidandhijin.com. We moved on to Helsinki and were there for the best possible day of the year - exactly midsummer when the city empties out. We emptied with them to an island to celebrate the longest day. There were bonfires (20-foot piles of green sticks), dancing and the singing of the traditional songs. The kids struggle on stilts and they sell small things made of wood and twigs. The Finns are a smart and tidy people who have made it big in the tech world of late and incomes have been high. Some Finns are worried that the dream is dimming because Nokia, the one time cell phone leader, is nearly exhausted and other reversals threaten there financial future. I get the feeling that they will be fine though. They have a very make-do philosophy and their spareness is reflected in the house and design studio of their greatest architect, Alvar Aalto. The house was like the people, modest, and completely unembellished. Aalto never worked in Beverley Hills. The main attraction in Helsinki for us was the 20-seat restaurant Chef and Sommelier. Sasu Laukkonen makes the food in a tiny kitchen and sits with you gazing into your eyes while describing each dish. Yes, we were hypnotized. My friend Henri Alen set us up there on the last day before the remaining 10% of people leave town. I had met Henri at Buck’s when he filmed a Finnish cooking show at Buck’s recently. Henri is very big in Finland and of course he was at his lake house with most everyone else. Sasu spends his day gathering weeds and bits of turf from the roadside and mushrooms from the forest, then in combination with local fish invents compelling dishes. Dining with Sasu was almost a distillation of all the New Nordic cooking as each glass, sliver of bread, and pinch of salt has a story. Susu is a man on fire and when he hears that his place, in my opinion, is better than Noma I know he will agree because this is man on a mission to make his place the best restaurant in the world. We sampled a lot of New Nordic cooking and I can say it will never take hold here. Many of us have been to fancy restaurants in San Francisco and New York where the food seems to be mainly about design but has familiar tastes. Americans just require more stuff on the plate and less raw mackerel. At one point we were eating fir needles and pickled pinecones. Not as good as it sounds. They also lo-o-ve rye crisp which is pretty much everywhere. Even the houses are made of it. In Finland the people have to take a good deal of ribbing because the country is quite small and the people are demure and a great deal more civilized than nearly everyone else. But they like to kick it when they can so one way they cut loose is to bring the household carpets to the shore and launder them on piers specially constructed for that purpose. This is popular summer pastime and we saw a good many installations with washing tables and large wringers. OK, I know it’s not a monster truck rally and you think I’m kidding but it gives you something to do every year, by the water and turns work into play.

We had one more day so we hopped a ferry for the hour and a half ride to Estonia. It rained all day and we saw the country from a dripping tour bus. They are trying mighty hard there and even with the lowest population density in Europe have built a couple skyscrapers in their compact city demonstrating their arrival in the 21st century. Margaret and I hopped back to Denmark for a final night and we opted to stay by the airport in the town of Dragør dating to the 12th century. We dipped into the only place open for dinner and didn’t expect much as we were almost the only ones there. What came were clever salads with local greens and perfectly seared scallops, magnificent battered and fried place, a local fish, and a perfectly done roast pork with gravy. Maybe the Strandshotel dining room is the best restaurant in the world.

THE FARM OF THE FUTURE -- AN APOLOGY TO STEVE JOBS -- and A RIF ON BOOK COLLECTING

2011-12-10T15:24:00.000-08:00

Bill Davidow stopped in recently and introduced me to Ko Nishimura. Ko was peddling lettuce and I explained that we already had plenty of lettuce and why did I need his. Ko said it was rather special and I felt a bit like I was being sold magic beans. I was right. I was invited to the farm in Campbell and when I arrived at a nondescript warehouse I stepped into the farm of the future.

Ecopia Farms™ is a tech startup featuring some pretty bright lights such as Bill Davidow, cofounder of Mohr Davidow the venerable VC firm, and Ko who as CEO grew electronic parts supplier, Selectron, from $93 million a year to over $18 billion. Ko was also on the board of the Santa Fe Institute, a think tank where the Nobel crowd hangs out. Their other co-conspirator is Sam Araki who built satellites for many years as the President of Lockheed Martin Missile and Space Company. So you might be getting the notion that these are not your average farmers or indeed typical startup guys. None of these fellows is exactly a kid but they bring an exuberance to the venture as if it sprung from a dorm room, yet tempered with their daunting collective wisdom.
It is sweetly ironic that Ko and Sam should end up as farmers. As kids their fathers were both farmers who wanted to make sure that their sons weren’t stuck behind the plow, so they went to college and ended up pursuing careers in industry. But here they are - behind the plow. In Japan this is know as “Big Bachi” or the gods reversing your plans by playing a trick on you.

Ko and I agree that our emphasis in this country on food as a commodity as opposed to being a substance we treat with reverence needs to be rethought. Based on income, food is cheaper here than anywhere else in the world but we are losing ground against the interests of agribusiness. Ko says that his grandmother taught him to treat food and life itself as a sacred trust and he feels that he is keeping doing right by her with Ecopia Farms. Sam’s father was an organic agricultural innovator who pioneered the use of bat guano and fishmeal to grow legendary produce. Now they are taking this family heritage and giving it a 21st Century spin. These folks have assembled a powerful team. The COO is Phil Fok who heads up the actual farming. He is turning out both greens and process patents at a prodigious pace.
I have seen several high-rise farming schemes. In fact there is a whole industry devoted to making pretty drawings of 50-story farms that are not remotely practical. Ecopia Farms is different. Using a multi-level growing rack with low-temp high-efficiency controlled-spectrum lights they can make greens stand up and sing. These plants are grown organically in a proprietary soil and they use about 1% of the water of outdoor farming. The installation is part R & D facility and part working farm, shipping to the best restaurants in the Bay Area. They grow tiny micro greens and herbs as well as lettuces, arugula, kale, chard and a host of other items. Many of the whole lettuces are about the size of a rose flower. The first full-scale Ecopia Farms operation is in a 23,000 sq. ft. warehouse (about ½ acre) which produces the equivalent of a traditional 100-acre farm. There is a great deal of unused warehouse space in cities all around the country and Ecopia Farms is gearing up to be the ultimate expression of “locally produced”

By precisely controlling the light, soil and water they take commercially available organic seed and make it produce far more efficiently than can be done outdoors. Naturally one thinks of the electricity used to light all the racks but I’m told that the efficiency is so high that the florescent room lights actually use more power than the grow lights. Add photovoltaics to the roofs and urban farming has come of age.
Some firms in the green space are well intentioned but wholly unworkable. Electric airplanes, viable fuel from algae and self-assembling solar electric farms make nice articles but in the real world are a waste of time. I’ve seen Ecopia Farms and we are now carrying the product. Check our specials menu for a featured salad.
Ecopiafarms.com

Dr. Rodney Perkins Breakfast Special 2.0
Dr. Perkins is a friend of mine and has been since the mid-80s when he was my last client before I went into the restaurant business. Rodney happens to be a world-renowned ear surgeon and an inventor. He has a great many patients and has led the world of hearing by merging innovative software with hearing hardware, not unlike Steve Jobs did at Apple.

The only name we have on any of the menu items (besides my wife’s pork chops) is The Dr. Rodney Perkins Breakfast Special. It has been a staple of our menu for nearly 10 years. Not one to rest on his past culinary success Rodney has devised a new incarnation of this old favorite.

Although Dr. Perkins was a founder of the first company to use collagen injections for wrinkles, the first company to commercialized a medical laser that was developed from scratch to be a surgical laser, the first company to introduce high tech signal processing into the hearing device industry and a founder of multiple successful medical device companies in a wide range of surgical specialties, he is inordinately pleased with his spot on the menu and he should be. It’s a healthy omelet - low in fat and calories and remarkably satisfying.

He tells me he is already working on 3.0.

Sorry Steve
I used to be a general building contractor back in the Pleistocene. My first job was fixing a stuck door in a house in Atherton and three years later I had remodeled the entire 25,000 sq. ft. mansion. Essentially I learned my trade by trial and error on this one house. Then I started job #2.

I went to see a young computer guy in Los Gatos who had bought an unremarkable 1920s tract house that he thought he’d fix up. When we first met he showed me his computer. It was an Apple 2. We sat on the floor in a room devoid of furniture and he explained that he could create a column and a row and by merging the numbers calculate a result. “Big deal,” I thought. I asked him how many employees he had and was startled when he said about 250. Now that impressed me. I had just one, plus my partner and wife, Margaret.

Thus began a year of yet more trial and error. I’ve read the new book about Steve Jobs and I shake my head in wonder that he put up with me for so long. We were actually friends though, and spent a good deal of time together. He and his girlfriend Barbara came up to our house and we frequently went out to dinner. In fact it was Barbara who picked the name for our two-week old second son, Tyler. One day, early in the job, Barbara came home as Steve and I were conferring on the front porch. She was in great distress and said, “John Lennon has been killed.” Steve burst onto tears and we had a group hug. It was a moment of raw humanity with Steve. There was a lot more emotion to come.

The house was a modest one and our aim was to make it a little gem. The problem was I was merely handy and Steve wanted perfection. Building is a skill like any other and to be good at it requires a great deal of experience; experience I didn’t yet have. But beyond that Steve had developed the now well documented notion that even if you think otherwise you can do a lot better than you think you can and that every detail matters.

Once he took me into his basement and pointed out the phone block mounted to a piece of plywood. It had a single wire running across its surface and he asked that we make it straight and evenly space the staples. I just rolled my eyes and argued with him that it didn’t matter. I lost that argument and all of the others. Steve yelled at a lot of people and the reports say he was pretty abusive. He must have cut me some slack because I recall him yelling but it wasn’t memorably vicious.
During the time we were together Apple went public and I now know that he was under a great deal of stress. At work he was fully in command but at home he was less sure. Steve is often pictured sitting on the floor of this house in his profound simplicity and I can report that during the time I knew him he really did sleep on a mattress on the dining room floor and his only furniture was a kitchen table and chairs. The reason he is pictured sitting on the floor is that he could not pick a couch. I know, I went couch shopping with him. I also went car shopping with him. He drove an old Mercedes and after his highly successful IPO at the age of 25 he thought a new car was in order. The very definition of frustrating is car shopping with Steve Jobs. We went to several dealerships and each time the over-choice and flawed design made it impossible for him to pick one and we went home in the old car. Of course he could have just bought them all but Steve was never wired for excess.

One of my last encounters with Steve was when he was holding back payment because of some inadequacies on the job. I was pretty desperate to get paid and early one morning I jumped on him in bed and half-mockingly grabbed him by the neck and told him he better pay me or he was going to be the deadest - youngest - richest self-made man. In the end we worked it out and he paid me.
For many years Steve lived in Woodside but he didn’t feel comfortable coming into Buck’s and I don’t think he ever did. Now that I am older I really appreciate his persnicketyness. Steve wasn’t in a position to teach me my trade, but he was a teacher but if the student isn’t ready…. So Steve, I’m sorry I wasn’t a better craftsman. Now I get it, but alas it’s too late.

My Books – mine, all mine, damnit!
I collect rare books. If you’re a collector you know that it is just crazy to pass some things up so I’m fortunate that there are not a great many books in my nitch or I would be broke. I collect books with things in them. Simply that. Books either one-off or editions that have had things applied to the inside. They could contain letters or even envelops. I recently acquired a fantastic collection of 457 ‘covers.’ These are envelops with pictures on the outside commemorating this or that. This collection is one person’s life’s work. The collection dates from the Civil War through the Spanish American War right through WWI. The collector fancied anti-Confederacy pictures many of which are pretty harsh. Well it was war, right?

Several of these books are on display at Buck’s. One of my favorites is in the bar. It is a collection of cigarette cards pasted in a book from the 1920s. Not wildly rare in itself but surrounding the open book in the frame you will see original, miniature tempera painting of the warships of the world. I have several hundred of these tiny paintings with detail so miniscule that the finest details disappears below view and it must have been done under a huge magnifier with a single hair brush.

In the back hall is another book of cigarette card photos, hand-tinted in Algeria, about a hundred years ago. They are sort of harem women and I have shuffled the cards around to display the more demure ones because most of them are pretty naked. They are actually French prostitutes wearing, or barely wearing, lavish costumes. On the wall opposite that is a collection of fabric samples or more exactly the trim used on lampshades and curtains. There is a French word for this trade but I can’t recall it. Please if you know the term clue me in. These materials were manufactured in New York’s Garment District in the 1920s by the Sig Heller Company and it is a salesman’s sample book. One day a fellow came up to me very excited. “I went to grammar school with Siggy Heller the grandson of this manufacturer.” Nice.

Near the back of the restaurant, mounted on two columns, are pages from the one book I specialize in. I have 7 examples and am always looking for more. I have visited the copies at Stanford and the British Library and but have been unable to locate many others. The book, is called Ancient Coins and was published in 1852. It is a brilliant treatise on coins from their invention to late Roman times. That’s a pretty good run but after nearly 3,000 years coins are about to disappear. The books contain 11 pages of coin replicas. In the mid 19th century a new type of binding was invented to replace stitching called ‘perfect binding’ with a glued edge. It is far from perfect and so these books have generally fallen apart. All but one of mine have been rebound. This alone is an interesting tour through the world of binding.…are you still awake…?

Anyway, please, please, please if anyone can think of a pedantic Greek or Latin phrase I can use to refer to this sort of book I would love to start using it.

2011-04-14T16:11:00.000-07:00

Opps, I misspelled Gabriel, well tough no one reads this anyway. But if they (you) did (do) here it goes...

I’m a member of a cult. It’s true. It’s a non-religious one though and mostly composed of left-wingers but make no mistake, we have cult-like tendencies. This is my annual report on the hijinx in Long Beach at the TED Conference. The name means Technology Entertainment and Design. This year it could well have used the letter ‘A’ as well because there was a heavy emphasis on the arts. Like most topics at TED the arts come freighted with political and social import. Each year there is prizewinner who is given a hundred grand and the platform to make a wish. These wishes don’t include having the Budweiser girls dance at your summer BBQ (Yes I’m talking to you, Kelly) but are more like Jamie Oliver’s wish from last year that “Every child be taught to cook in school.” Of course this is simply ha-larious. Take it from me kids, cooking can only be done by experts in elaborately equipped gigantic factories. Plus you need packaging, trucks, advertising and lawyers. No. Food preparation is not for amateurs.

This year’s prizewinner, JR, had a much more down to earth idea. Go into ghettos and politically charged environments and rumble. JR is a 26-year-old Parisian street artist who gave up the spray can to travel with a small band of outlaws to very troubled cities to shoot people. It’s true. JR favors a very short barrel so he has to creep close to his quarry and from a couple of feet…aims and blam! He has their picture. He then takes these images and blows them up to billboard size and pastes them like wallpaper on the favelas in Rio, or ‘The Wall’ in Palestine or a desperate street in India. The idea is to involve the inhabitants in their neighborhoods and their very lives. He explains it far better than I can but, trust me, this guy has the magic; just look him up. “Stand up for what you care about by participating in a global art project & together we’ll turn the world inside out.” This is JR’s wish. 1930’s movie theaters in the Mission in the City and JR’s team has expressed interest in doing a project there. insideoutproject.net

TED is a five-day gab fest with about 70 speakers discussing everything from astrophysics and neuropathology to how very, very wrong that person was who last year promoted that vastly increased video gamesmanship as a way to save society.

Some of the most unlikely characters speak such as Mohamed Nanabhay, head of Al Jazeera, the once reviled Arabic news agency…now, not so. He was as relevant as the CEO of PepsiCo, Indra Nooya, was ill-advised. She seemed like a perfectly nice person and a capable CEO as she told us about the good works Pepsi is doing to help the disadvantaged. What she didn’t mention was that most of what Pepsi sells is child-blimping sugar water and meatless taco meat. Well no one is perfect but some product lines are less perfect than others.

We saw the stunning pictures of Paul Nicklen, the soft-spoken National Geographic photographer who encountered the extraordinarily vicious leopard seal under the ice in the south polar sea. Leopard seals have been know to crash through several feet of ice to eat people right down to and even including their boots, except this seems to be unsubstantiated. Paul showed us pictures of the encounter he had of the repeated attempts by the toothy 12-foot seal trying to feed him like your granny stuffing you with pabulum (but made out of penguins).

At TED we don’t just sit in comfy chairs like a bunch of smug over-achieving fat cats (OK there is a lot of that) but we also powwow in the social spaces. Myself, I am sometimes mistaken for someone of consequence (a rumor that has got about) to my perennially startled amusement. At one point I was talking about the future of the internet to a fellow who turned out to be the Steven Bratt, the CEO of the World Wide Web Foundation at M.I.T. He said he found my ideas compelling and brought over his associate to participate in the conversation. I found myself laying out the future of the WWW to Tim Burners-Lee, the guy who invented it. Yoohoo, people, I sell pancakes…professionally.

Speaking of food, the wacky and wise Nathan Myhrvold (ex-CTO at Microsoft) unveiled his $500 - 50 pound cookbook where he teaches us how to cook an egg in about 4 hours. But that egg is perfect. Nathan built a lab and has dissected the act of food preparation into its most basic components and then puts it all back together. This is an excellent how-to guide for sawing a remarkable amount of cooking equipment into twain to demonstrate the action inside. After sawing down the middle of a commercial convection oven he commented gleefully that the great thing about cutting machines in half is that you’ve got 2, count em, 2 halves. The man is a mad genius.

Deb Roy had a fascinating study on the formation of language. Using the ultimate nannycam he put cameras in every room of his house and taped the first 60,000 hours of the growing up process of his son. Deb was able to record the development of every word his son learned and how it happened. The camera tracked all the kid’s movements as well as those of the rest of the family. Brave New World you say? Well get-a-grip. Privacy is soooo 2003. Really, Deb’s study is quite a revelation but please watch the swearing around the kid will ya?

Morgan Spurlock depressed me with his presentation. Now, Morgan is a documentary film burner who made Super Size Me about his 30-day sentence at McDonalds. He has made a new film titled The Best Movie Money Can Buy. This is the tale of Morgan transparently selling product placement as the sole purpose of his documentary. He was able to get some sponsors though most (like PepsiCo) preferred not to join in. This is because (like the cigarette ads which show the young and pretty 20 somethings laughing and cavorting) they really sell addiction and death. Transparency is … err…hard for some companies. The depressing part of his talk (which will seen by millions) was that the very presentation itself was auctioned to a sponsor and someone bought the naming rights to: Some Damn Co. presents Morgan Spurlock. I actually forgot the name of the firm that bought it but it sold for 7,200 bucks which about what I pay my boat boy to polish the cleats on my yacht for a week.

Long Beach is a strange venue but the town is certainly glad to have us. The downtown looks peppy enough but a couple of blocks off the main drag reveals a business community that reminds me of Detroit but with better weather. The Long Beach airport buildings appear to be made of bolted together trailers and we quaintly wandered across the tarmac and actually climbed up and down stairs from our plane like Richard Nixon visiting Liberia. But Long Beach has its special charms. It is one of the few cities to feature a Seven Eleven with four working oil wells in the parking lot. A hundred years ago this area was the biggest oil producer in the world. It still smells like the whole town is being reroofed.

Bill Gates introduced a man he thinks is pretty hot stuff, Salmon Kahn, who founded the Kahn Academy. Sal is a Bay Area guy who gave up his servitude in the hedge fund mines to present short, simple online videos teaching all sorts of subjects. He started with math but has moved into economics and physics. It is his theory that lectures should be seen at home and that the homework is better being done in class. I think he might do to American education what Netflix did to Blockbuster. He has personally created 2,100 videos with 40,670,660 lessons delivered as of his speech. The Los Altos School Distinct has a pilot project using his teaching tools. Bill says Sal is the most important educator he has ever met.

Most of the talks are 18 minutes but some are just 3 like the one from the guy who told us about being on the jet that landed in the Hudson. He could see the river coming on fast and was sure that it was the end. But it wasn’t. His takeaway was: don’t put anything off because tomorrow can arrive unexpectedly…or not (I must finish Remembrance of Things Past, tonight!)

Some talks come with vivid demonstrations like that of the Handspring Puppet Company. These stage crafters built a lifelike full-sized horse with three actors inside it for a London (coming to New York) play called War Horse. You can see the puppeteers standing below the cane and leather puppet but in an instant you are made to see the horse as real or even more than real.

Reality is blurred once again when you hear about the advances in medicine such as the artificial human bladder the surgeon Anthony Atala printed on a modified dot matrix desktop printer and implanted in a teenage boy. It is still working after several years and the doctor is now printing kidneys, which are in a test phase.

TED is about the strange and transcendent. Strange is the savant Daniel Tammet who you can see a good deal of on youtube. He is best known as having recently recited, from memory, 22,514 digits of pi. Let me try… is it 3.141 or is it 3.414? Daniel also has synesthesia. This is a rare condition where the senses get scrambled. He can hear colors and smell sounds. Hey, I went to Berkeley in the 60’s. We could all do that then.

Stanley McChrystal the commander in the Middle East was with us and he told us what a good soldier he was but failed to mention his ill timed Rolling Stone interview in which he dissed the Commander-in-Chief and got tossed out on his keester. I was sitting right next to Gavan Newsom who diplomatically withheld comment. Julie Taymore was a refreshing contrast to Stanley. She headed up the disastrous Spiderman musical and she made reference to it with grace and humor. Even though this project hasn’t worked out so well she was the creative force behind the Lion King and I expect her to come roaring back in her next chapter.

My favorite presenters are the artists like Eric Whitace. He is a composer and a conductor who gave us Lux Aurumque. Here he assembled 185 singers from 12 countries to sing his choral work, virtually, then cut all them together and mapped each singer’s video on the screen. Since then he has done another video with 2,000 singers revolving slowly in giant spheres. It is spookily like the 22nd century.

22-year-old Sarah Kay brought us back to the present with her a-mazing slam poetry about growing up in New York with street smarts and a good attitude. She was my favorite of all the stage jockeys. You can finder her at http://blog.ted.com/2011/03/18/if-i-should-have-a-daughter-sarah-kay-on-ted-com/
Another artist was Homaro Cantu. He works in food at Moto in Chicago. This is America’s answer to El Bulli, in Spain, so it really isn’t food so much as theatrical gastronomy. I think I know where the other half of Myorvald ’s oven went. Here is a restaurant guy who isn’t concerned with nutrition, price, sustainability or practicality. With all that you still can’t get a reservation. Maybe I should try freezing maple syrup in liquid nitrogen. Help, someone call Jamie Oliver!

There are somber topics with hopeful notes such as the Egyptian Google employee who enabled the first wave of the Egyptian revolution. He told the TED crowd that the most remarkable thing about the uprising was that everyone (and no one) were the leaders.

We saw the first public demo of the Bubbli augmented reality application, which creates navigable photos in a bubble shape. Basically, Bubbli enables you to take a series of pictures with your phone camera that shows not just what’s directly in front of you, but also what’s all around, above and below you. Then, other people can navigate the view of the world captured by that ‘bubble’ by holding their own phones in front of them. A frivolous toy? Maybe, but so was Twitter.

Of course there were parties at night and (so unlike high school) I found myself at the cool kids party where I spoke to a couple of guys who told me that their fathers were in a movie together called Don’t Look Back, a long-ago documentary featuring Donovan and Bob Dylan. Oh, man I even have a son named Dylan. Norman Lear showed up; Demi Moore and Aston Kutcher drifted in and it became a real Hollywood scene but with more oil wells in the front yard than you see in Beverly Hills. (Note: They aren’t entirely absent in Beverly Hills by the way. There are producing wells on the campus of Beverly Hills High School. BHHS is floating on it; a fact that is cruelly ironic.)

The TED movement has grown far beyond the confines of Long Beach. In the last couple of years TEDX events have sprung up from Mombasa to Miami. These one-day affairs cost just $100 and follow the same basic format. There are several in the Bay Area throughout the year. Some 1,500 have already happened with another 800 are being planning. There is also a big TED event this summer in Edinburgh Scotland.

People think you have to be invited to go to the main event but this isn’t really the case, though it is generally sold out more then a year in advance. People do get into the French Laundry so you no doubt can come to TED if you are persistent. They let me in and I sell pancakes for a living.

Books Books Books

We have four great books by friends of mine to discuss this month. All these authors have been featured here before with previous books. But because these books don’t have the requisite three-flattering-pages-about-Jamis I don’t actually carry them here but I think, if you are very clever, you can find them.

Overconnected by Bill Davidow (Mohr
Davidow Venture Partners cofounder) is a somewhat depressing look at some of the dark consequences the internet can have on economies and political systems. (well I guess it can’t all be The Bernstein Bears Go to Disneyland) The shape and tenor of our interwoven world has basically come to us a compromised collection of default settings and this self assembly doesn’t come with robust failsafe protections. Bill has seen the internet grow from his insider’s point of view and the book is a cautionary tale in a world where unintended consequences are multiplied by ubiquitous connectivity.

In Next Medicine: The Science and Civics of Health Dr. Walter Bortz tells us that our medical system is essentially backwards. We attempt to fix what breaks verses preventing illness. Dr. Bortz should know a thing or two about health as a gerontologist who has gone deep into the subject. The fact is our medical techniques are the envy of the world but the economics and distribution of resources is slipping fast. It isn’t just some arm-chair gabbing either because Wally has made his own life an example of lifelong fitness. In fact, last time I checked he and his wife Ruth Anne had about 60 marathons between them.

Andy Kessler is a funny writer. Breezy and full of pith and vinegar with his up-in-your-grill gonzo journalism. Andy lays out a new manifesto for unleashing entrepreneurial creativity in Eat People. ”Andy is a recovering Wall Street hedge funder who is for, growth for growth sake guy supporting unfettered marketplaces with an unromantic view of government protections to preserve the status quo of ongoing businesses. If they fail, let em go. Andy makes the dismal science of economics lively and with his hilarious push o the pen it goes down easily.
Guy Kawasaki’s Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds and Actions examines how to promote your brand in a world of vicious competition and ethical conflicts. Richard Branson say, “Guy’s book captures the importance – and the - art of believing in an idea that delivers something entirely unique to the customer. The power of a really good idea to transform the marketplace and individual customer experiences is huge and this book offers a wealth of insights to help business and entrepreneurs tap into that potential.

New England Walkabout, Bill Draper and a whale hits the beach

2010-12-30T13:47:00.000-08:00

New England Walkabout
It was fall and time for a trip to New England. My great friend Craig Harvey and I landed in Boston and things went well at first. We rented some sort of Honda and pushed start but the beast refused to move. We pumped the brake peddle, and whispered incantations; we yelled threats but were finally forced to ask a young fellow in the yard how they could rent us a brand new car that wouldn’t start. He looked at us with kindness and explained that all we had to do was push on the pedal (formerly known as the gas peddle) because it was a hybrid and it was actually on all along.

Ok, Ok, let’s get out of here. So into Boston which glowed invitingly in the distance. My advice - don’t take the 90 into town. Sure it goes to Boston but it has no exits at all in Bean Town so we ended up in Cambridge and had to double back. We were headed for the North End but somehow missed it and after about an hour found ourselves back at the airport. In fact, right in front of the Hertz office. We went inside and asked directions. It turned out that the neighborhood we were headed for was not much more than a long walk, which we considered doing at that point. Finally we parked in town and tried to open the trunk. This turned out to be something of a challenge. It was cold and Craig wanted his jacket. After a careful search and an expletive-filled interval, we uncovered the cleverly camouflaged release button where we were surprised to discover that his bag was back at the Hertz counter. This was starting to get interesting. So, to the Hertz office once more where we grabbed the bag under the suspicious glare of the counterman. Safaris like this are really quite difficult and fraught with peril - so be warned. We went back to Boston but failing to find parking ended up in Cambridge where we had been seemingly days before.

We stopped at a hotel and asked for a room. The desk clerk laughed heartily and when he calmed down explained that it was regatta weekend, the biggest weekend of the year. The Head of The Charles is a boat race where folks from all over the world come to the historied river to row skinny watercraft up and down, all the time being screamed at by some angry little person with a megaphone.

Just before bursting into tears at the prospect of sleeping in the car (me, not Craig) they miraculously scrounged a room they had been saving and we were in. The next morning as we approached our demon car we discovered it was running. It seems the engine charges the battery and comes on from time to time, it you don’t shut the thing down. No matter, it gets great mileage even when it is left running all night.

The race was spectacular. On a clear cool morning from the JFK Bridge, with Harvard as the backdrop, we inspected these clever craft sliding by. It was one of those great Ivy League moments that made us - two Berkeley alums - envious until we remembered that the genius types today often drop out of Harvard and move to our neck of the woods.

Our next stop was Concord. You know, home of the Concord grape. Ok Concord, what else have you done for us? Actually they did quite a bit. Concord was the Palo Alto of its day. The Revolutionary War started there because it was a place was the big thinkers lived. At the Concord Museum they have one of the lanterns on display that were lit in the Old North Church indicating if the Redcoats were coming by land or sea. Now it might be one of lanterns but I’m in the famous artifact business too, so I wonder.

When they weren’t starting wars and inventing grape juice the local intelligencia wrote about nature and self-reliance. Emerson proposed that we have a respect for the natural world as opposed to the popular feeling that we were at odds nature so he is considered by many to be the father of the ecology movement. Louisa M. Alcott promoted women’s rights so the women’s suffrage movement has roots in Concord. And Concord was also the center of the anti-slavery movement in America. Concord was also the center of clock making in America and a country that runs on time is one that prospers.

This area, like so many across New England, is replete with closed factories left over from the Industrial Revolution. Many have been shut since WWII. There was a brief revival as the tech hub in the 60s and 70s around route 128 but we snatched much of the rug from under those enterprises and took it out west.

Craig and I drove across the Massachusetts to Great Barrington to spend the night with Bruce Kelly in his country manse surrounded a forest of trees flaunting their finery of yellow, gold and red, all screaming, “look at me, look at me!”

We then zipped down to Old New York and dropped off the devil car. New York is in a word - Fabulous. It is like landing on the moon but in a hybrid Honda. My son Dylan showed up and we joined the throngs on the sidewalks. On one excursion we spied a really clever alligator purse in a store window. We guessed 5 gs. It was $22,000. I saw a crystal chandler in one shop – a cool 140 grand, plus shipping. In another store they has just sold a 1943 $10,000 Treasury note for $55,000. We were really taken with the idea that there were several stores which sold money.

At one point we found ourselves in a Rolls-Bentley-Lamborghini-Porsche store. There were so many cars at roughly a half million that it was hard to pick just one. And who the heck buys a Rolls off the rack? After all you want the albino crocodile hide luggage to be monogrammed just right don’t you?

One of my aims was to go to Argosy Books to check out their first edition of a Two Years Before the Mast by Richard Henry Dana. This is the book printed in 1840 about California that set the world’s imagination on fire before the Gold Rush. This 5-story bookstore is jammed with books, maps and prints on every imaginable subject. Another store that really grabbed us was Evolution in SoHo. There they specialize in selling the skeletons of all sorts. I really mean all sorts, mostly human fetus bones. Ugh!

We made sure to cruise the art galleries in Chelsea where we had real trouble figuring out the economic model. One gallery held a multi-ton, stainless steel tree-like structure festooned with refrigerator sized human organ-like parts also of metal. It wound throughout the many rooms and had been constructed on site. Not just unsalable but unmovable as well. The most provocative show was by Gottfried Helnweig. This is a major painter and wack job who paints photorealistic portraits of young girls. They are huge canvases and the detail is unparalleled. Many are hauntingly lyrical but a few of the kids are wearing SS uniforms and seem to have been recently gunned down. Might look good in the hall but…

On Broadway we attended a strange and ragged production of Merchant of Venice. I know, who am I to criticize Shakespeare? The one making you lunch that’s who! The recent movie is great but I think the actual story is a mess. Sure, the language is spectacular with its “pound of flesh” and “all that glitters in not gold.” but the story is …ehhhh. The production was either badly or misdirected as it had the feel of a 19th century melodrama with a lot of eye rolling and over acting. At one point I saw a fellow in the audience who looked like the love child of Yahoo Serious and Crusty the Clown. It was the orange haired head of Python, Eric Idle. We made visual contact and rolled our eyes in sync with the actors on stage. A perfect New York experience.

My favorite store was Plaza Watch and Jewelry. It’s near 57th and 7th and had stacks of rather valuable watches in plastic bags piled about a foot deep in the windows. I mean really, all these Rolexes just heaped up like junk. Inside they sold ephemera so obtuse that I was lucky to escape. Obscure baseball cards, dusty animal heads and a tiny bellman’s outfit sized for the midgets they used to employ in that trade. I really wanted it but 15 grand? Yikes! The owner was a man so rotund he couldn’t get between the counters and the floors were strewn with years of trash. And this in the shadow of Carnage Hall.

New York City is completely in love with itself and I can see why. There is a saying that if you, “Stand in front Rockefeller Center long enough and you will eventually see everyone you have ever met.” Sounds about right.

BLUE WHALE ON BEACH
Whales have been tooling around off San Francisco like they own the joint this year in numbers not seen in decades. In a two-hour period this fall at the Farallones we counted at least two dozen humpbacks. For some whales all this swimming about doesn’t work out too well when there is a contest between them and a ship. The ship generally wins and there have been at least six documented whale strikes off our immediate coast this year. It hasn’t been fully confirmed but it is likely that the 80-foot blue whale that washed up on the beach below Pescadero was the victim of one such encounter.

The mother came ashore in early October accompanied by an aborted half-term calf. This forlorn pair drew a crowd but a small one compared to a Justin Bieber sighting. After a couple of weeks there were never more than a handful of folks at the beach to look at the whale. I think this odd considering that the last blue to come ashore was in the 1920s on the Atlantic in Canada. Here is to opportunity to touch the largest animal to walk or swim on this planet since it was formed 4.6 billion years ago on, I believe, a Thursday.

In a month the whale was been reduced by sea and tide to about half its bulk and it will soon be just a few bones left bleaching on the beach. I would dearly love to scrounge a bone but they are not only quite huge but also surrounded by signs warning that to disturb any part of a marine mammal can result in a federal felony rap. I think I‘ll just leave them there.

I do have a narwhal tusk, which I was sent by the president of Iceland but it is still officially on loan and is officially their property. In Iceland they pass these out like pixie sticks and, along with fish, crushing national debt and sadness, are their only exports. Can the troubles in Iceland be the karmic result of their tendency to use whale meat in their tacos? I wonder.

Day of the horse
Every year on the second Saturday in October hundreds of horses descend on Woodside and ride around pretending to obey the commands they have been taught. They way these horses are so lovingly cared for I wonder if it’s the rider or the horse giving the orders. The Day of the Horse is one on which you hear all sorts of unusual expressions like ramuda, belvin and corn liquor.

Woodside is a very old American town by California standards. It used to be a two-fisted Wild West town with saloons, cowboys on horseback and gambling halls (actually with all the venture capital speculating there is still a lot of gambling). I’m told that the town used to be called Whiskey Hill and with 22 saloons at one point that sounds about right. The bordellos have largely disappeared but we still have the horse. In fact Woodside is one of the horsiest towns in the world. Horseback riding today is one of the few pastimes where the participants don’t get laughed at for sporting a funny hat and leather whip…or do they?

We have a hitching post at Buck’s and it isn’t some vestige of the past but is still in daily use. A custom has developed of bringing one’s bridle into Buck’s and draping it over the Statue of Liberty. I know some will say that this is sacrilege but in spite of what you might have heard this is not the real Statue of Liberty but in fact is a rather bad casting made out of Modelo beer cans. But the horses are real enough and the town has enthusiastically welcomed the event.

In 2005 Fentress Hall and Donna Poy thought it would be fun to invite a few riders to come and ride all around the town and have a little horse fair at town hall. Now the ride is in its sixth year and the event has grown to include well over 300riders with many more coming to the fair. There are countless horse events all over the country - jumping, cutting, ride & tie, and thoroughbred racing but the Day of the Horse isn’t any sort of contest. It’s just a day in the sun with your horse and your hat riding along - spitin tabaccie and mumbling, “Gol’ dern, Effie, I can’t wait to get to the general store and get me some a that peppermint candy and sarsaparilla”.

The Buck’s Collection.
Jim Lyons approached me one day and said that he wanted to produce a book documenting all the junk here at Buck’s. I said I was flattered but couldn’t see why he would bother. After all I had just cleaned out my garage and nailed a few bits of flotsam to the walls. It took a bit of convincing but he finally persuaded me to let him loose with his team.

This book is actually the product of several collaborators foremost Jim who is retired physicist. Jeff Thomas took the pictures and there is an iphone app, naturally, which was created by Tom Digrazia. Another key person was, the brains behind Buck’s, Margaret MacNiven. Me, I didn’t do anything but wander around drinking coffee and chatting.

Jim made it easy walking me around having me talk into a tape recorder like some WW I doughboy in an old folks home. Now Jim is a very precise fellow and I think it might be his preference that I stop moving or adding things but the day the book was finished I was installing yet more stuff; so this book is snapshot of the day that it was taken and, like the tattoos on a San Quentin lifer, its bound to evolve from one day to the next.

If you use this book intending to build an exact copy of Buck’s in another town you owe me a license fee like Tokyo Disney. On the other hand just go ahead. I’ll can give you the name of my Moscow space suit guy and he can definitely kick you a suit.

Bill Draper
The Startup Game written by Bill Draper

It has been some time since we have featured two books at Buck’s because we run the risk of losing our distinction as the smallest bookstore in the world when we do. But in this case Bill Draper’s new book represents a milestone in a career and a life that is simply Dazzling.

Bill’s father established the first venture capital firm on the west coast and Bill went on to found Sutter Hill Ventures as well as Draper Richards an early stage VC outfit in San Francisco. I’ll let you discover the facts about him in his own words in the book. Here I’m more concerned about the man.

I am not alone in saying that Bill has long been the most elegant personification of ‘class’ we have seen in these parts. He’s Sean Connery good looking but without the pistol. Bill is the middle generation of a three part (so far) saga of venture folks. Sadly, due to genetic mutation, the third in line, Tim Draper, came out a little strange with his propensity to leap from buildings in a Batman suit beating some helpless Stratocaster half to death but even he can’t dim the lights of this tribe.

In Silicon Valley we think we are pretty hot stuff and have invented modern cool. If you know Bill you will see that this is true. But the real measure of a man isn’t the accomplishments that you can see listed on Wikipedia but is reflected in the eyes of his family and friends and I count myself lucky to call Bill my friend.

The book will be available here in early January.

Turkey Lebanon Syria Jordan

2010-05-19T14:33:00.000-07:00

Ever since I discovered the long lost Archimedes Codex I have been fascinated by Byzantium and felt it was high time I went to Constantinople to see what was left of the joint. People rave about Istanbul and they tell you it’s a fantastic place but frankly Istanbul was a bit dull even though we still had a great time because I conned my cousin Will Milne (local home builder here in Woodside) and his son Gary as well as my son Tyler to accompany me. A retinue, just like in old Byzantium.

Will found us a great hotel with a commanding view of the Bosporus and I was in awe of so many ships going back and forth. Coal barges, freighters,lumber ships, container vessels, ferries, tugs, fishing boats and tanker after tanker. At times I could count over a 125 large ships at once.
Turkey is surprisingly expensive and let me tell you the food is on a par with San Francisco in cost and Russia in execution. Fortunately our hotel had a spectacular breakfast and convivial staff with fun guests even if several turned out to be Buck’s customers so it was like being here but with more hummus.

The thing about Istanbul is that it is paved with mosques. I have seen plenty of mosques but the original big dog, Hagia Sophia, from the 6th century is impressive. People profess to love it but it does have a heavy, dumped from the sky appearance though it is cheered up a bit by Minute Man Missile looking minarets. It was originally a Byzantine Church and was later converted to a mosque. It set the domed style you see all over the Moslem world. In fact, it was copied several times full size in Istanbul such as Blue Mosque right next door from the 11th century which is almost identical. Several others just as big and countless smaller ones fill the town for the five times daily battle of the bands, or more properly the singing of prayers which seems to be a calling back and forth from tower to tower. The Hagia Sophia is now desanctified and is a museum. We were going in and the Chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel
was coming out. She seemed nice if in a bit of hurry with a few dozen
security and about bazillion press folks mobbing her.

I had always wanted to see the Golden Horn. Did you know that John C. Freemont named the Golden Gate after Constantinople’s Gold Horn? This inlet was famously the port of the eastern Roman Empire’s fleet. It was protected by an iron chain that stretched across the mouth. The dynamics of chain sag make this difficult to imagine but at one Ottoman castle they had what was purported to be a piece of it. I tried to buy it but they would not sell. Tyler located MiniTurk a village of miniatures of the great buildings in Turkey which we accessed by boat across the Horn.

At one point we were crossing the Horn in a small open boat, ably skippered by a man unaccountably named Murray. or His face was wrapped in a cheerful smile if not exactly backed by an excess of teeth. Murray might have been Charon’s brother piloting us over the River Styx to Hell as in Greek mythology for all the condoms and cow heads in the water. The luster of gold had definitely moved to another part of town. Later we went out on the much larger and cleaner Bosporus for a cruise along the shore. Here we saw the mansions of the super rich. It seems that Istanbul has the 4th most billionaires of any major city, somewhat behind greater Palo Alto but still, Istanbul. They don’t seem to value privacy much because the pools and yards were there for all the tourists to see. They have some fine yachts too. One was the Savarona a 408 footer from the U.S. built in 1931 by the granddaughter of the guy who built the Brooklyn Bridge. The yacht was bought by Turkey and given to Kermal Ataturk the revered founder who brought Turkey into the modern world.

We were repeatedly advised not to make fun of the revered founder. He kicked the clerics out of government and made the people adopt western dress, science and education. He got rid of the cumbersome Arabic alphabet and he gave women rights. He basically remade the entire place after kicking out the Europeans and the Ottomans. The man dated Zsa Zsa Gabor. Not the wizened old cop-slapper but the hot international 1930s Zsa Zsa. He had the world’s largest palace, the largest yacht and everyone’s respect. He died of excess partying. Why we would think of making fun of him is beyond me. Of course since they mentioned it I was always just an inch away from screaming some pretty coarse indictment of the man but I didn’t want to end up in a Turkish prison.

Did someone say Turkish prison? Well, who doesn’t recall the delightful travelogue The Midnight Express the semi accurate tale of a young American who was smuggling hash and got tossed in prison in Istanbul. He was not pleased with the prison experience, especially after serving many years and then having his sentence extended to life. “Hey, this is America you can’t do…oh right.” Anywho, this book and movie really made the Turk’s heads explode and this was another thing we were asked not to bring up. In fact we were warned about not stealing towels and to avoid earthquakes. The prison in the story was a few steps from our hotel and is now a Four Seasons so at least the food there is better.

I love all the odd stuff about a country. Down on the waterfront we found a brisk trade in fish sandwiches. Hundreds of folks simply crazy for these fresh looking sandwiches. Tyler and Gary gamely shorted a couple of them, bite by bite. They were made of mackerel and smelled like cat food. It was right by these fishwives that we found about a dozen nightclubs devoted to colorful beanbag chairs. These clubs were located on a bridge across the Horn and each had hundreds of vinyl beanbags. It is exceedingly difficult to look elegant in a contraption like this especially with the thousands of fishing lines overhead as fishermen with huge piles of bait try their luck from the bridge. As far as I could see none had caught a dern thing but they sure had a pantload of bait. No, it seems the fish they were catching were 4” sardines. In that same area was a fellow doing a brisk trade in weighing people on a bathroom scale for about a dime. Will was a little amazed and had himself weighed and insisted I do it even though the scale was clearly broken.

Sure we saw classy things in the berg like the archeological museum.

The Greek and Roman marble was better than any collection I have ever seen. They had on loan The Discus Thrower from The Louvre. This is famous as being both exquisite and for the fact that that an ancient head repairer got the head on backwards. The marble sarcophagi of the ancient Romans were the finest marble works imaginable. I wish I could be a dead Roman sometimes as they made it look so much fun.

Of course the main highlight in Istanbul was the Obama cat. This is cat that lives in the Hagia Sophi. When Obama came a couple of years back he was photographed with this cat and ever since it has been preening for photo opps.

One final thing is that everyone smokes. Kids, old ladies and every man. But on TV they can’t show smoking. We watched the movie Dick Tracy in the hotel and they put little animated birds, dolphins and cats over the cigarettes and these little animations remade the film in the best way and really made us want to smoke.

Of course we could be in Turkistan. There you are only allowed to smoke inside building so the restaurants are full of smoke but the streets are clear. The great leader there is definitely nuts. He has prohibited seatbelts as encouraging reckless driving. I have got to go there.

Lebanon

Gary and Will had to return home so Tyler and I flew to Beirut in Lebanon. They call this pile the Paris of the Mediterranean but I’ve been to Paris and they must be thinking of a different Paris. It looked great from the air but on the ground you can see they have a management problem. I have some suggestions. Stop letting open sewers run onto the beach where you want folks to swim. Patch the bullet holes. I know it looks macho but really the war is over and 50 million machine gun holes makes they place look a little unkempt. The whole country is actually on high alert. Many street corners have tanks with real cannons and a guy sitting at the ready. Tens of thousands of soldiers infect the streets, all with machine guns and more sitting at 50 calibers hunkered behind sandbags in blown out buildings.

Here’s the amazing thing. They are completely ignored. The place is also clogged with Ferrari dealers, Gucci stores and more Mercedes dealers then anywhere else in the world. I saw as many as two Benz stores in one block and this was out in the country. There are four jobs in Lebanon. Cab driver, soldier, car dealer and plastic surgeon. The place is quite prosperous but it hasn’t translated to elegance. The hills are crammed with a skelter of apartment buildings as high as 12 stories on the tops of the overbuilt hills. The beaches are where the poor folks or even squatters live.

Tyler and I rolled into our beachfront hotel. I asked for a room with a view of the ocean. “No we can’t, high season.” Later we discovered there were about 3 of 100 rooms occupied and we got a view of the construction site. Well, I guess it was high season. We walked all over the city. It is one massive block of concrete. The citizens love to brag about the vibrant nightlife. This means drinking, sex and waving your Rolex in the air. I checked this out with some locals and after feigning insult they agreed. This doesn’t mean that the people are unpleasant. Far from it. The Lebanese are very hospitable (except at our hotel where they told Tyler he couldn’t play the grand piano in the lobby but to their credit they were right. He couldn’t, because it was a fake) The Lebanese will admit that there are a lot of bejeweled posers showing off. But they will insist on putting you up in their home, buying you dinner and probably giving you the Rolex. A generous and warm people while being self absorbed and wildly proud of their concrete playground.

Outside of town we went to Grotte de Jeita.
This is a cavern of such heartbreaking beauty that their campaign to have it listed as one of the 7 natural wonders of the world is an effort we will support. Our cab driver, Michael, had suggested we go there and he was so right to tell us. Later we asked him why he was taking us in the wrong direction. In halting English (they speak Arabic and French with a good deal of English) that he said we should come to home and meet his wife over tea. Snap, Michael, another good call and there we were on his veranda looking at pictures of his kids and eating baklava. “Hey Mike, can I have your watch?”

Our preferred mode of travel was the people’s bus. Cheap, and you meet great folks. One ride was with an entire bus of soldiers. All stern faced until Tyler loosed then up with a Beatles song. We drove through Biblos (where the alphabet was invented) to Tripoli. I liked this seaside city. Crazy with bullet holes but no tourists except us and a vibrant market with funny, happy store keepers. From there we took a white knuckler into the mountains to Bcharre. This looks almost like an Italian town with its terraces and olive groves. It’s a ski resort though the snow was nearly gone. This is the birthplace and grave of Kahil Gibran. To some hippies from the 60s this is a big deal. Like Pirsig and Castaneda, Gibran was a minor writer appealing to drug addled hedonists.

In fact many people in the Middle East are hedonists in the best possible sense. A young man in Jordon was lamenting how much he hated his country. He said the people have no ambition, no imagination. “All they want to do is make love to their wives and eat.” Ha! This struck us as highly evolved.

So with a great sushi dinner in Beirut (our last American food for a while) we headed to the old part of the country, the Bekka Valley and the city of Baalbek a Roman
stronghold and religious center.
The ruins of the temples are among the finest from ancient Rome. Some of the columns are 60 feet tall and have never fallen. These granite columns came from Egypt across the sea, over the mountains and through the desert and the biggest temple took about 200 years to erect. This take-your-time attitude is still the way they build all over this region. Houses now are of cast concrete and are one to four stories with the rebar projecting from the roof. The upper floors are usually unfinished waiting for the next generation to complete. This gives much of the Middle East a tentative look when it’s just that they are in no hurry.

It was in Baalbek where we had a superb meal, maybe the best of our trip at a tourist place in front of the ruins. It was Good Friday and as we were served dinner outside a procession of Roman soldiers came down the street whipping a guy dressed as Christ carrying a cross. True dinner theater. We ate with the troubled son of the owner. He was about 22 and with impeccable English told how he crashed his car and got busted for driving on drugs but his father paid the cops and got him off. He was dressed as a hip-hop American but he was local lad in the middle of nowhere except his town happens to be the Hezbollah stronghold. At one point they took a few rockets in the village and the kid told us he took a handful of Xanex and ran through the streets yelling that life was a joke as they were under fire. He also informed us that Tom and Jerry cartoons are very popular in the Middle East. When I asked him why, he said that Hanna or was it Barbarra, the creators, was Lebanese. You really do see Tom and Jerry a lot on TV there and you can buy the comics in any small town. I looked them up: Irish and Italian. But hey, let them dream.

People advise you everywhere not to discuss religion and politics just before they lay into these issues. They are all experts but with very biased points of view. I am well versed on the Mexican-American War and the conquest of California and so I will stick to that. If you want my opinion on religion and politics in the Middle East I plead ignorance. I wish all sides peace and good health.

Syria

Now Syria is not a country most folks just stroll on into. We had to send to the embassy in DC to get a visa and swear we had never been to “occupied Palestine.” Where the heck is that?...oh Israel. But when we got to the border the lines were 8 hours long so we ditched our cab and walked behind buses and vans through 4 checkpoints without being stopped. We figured that we had a visa and the worst case was several years in prison but they never actually saw us so there we were on the road to Damascus.

Ahhh, Damascus at Easter. We knew some Christians in the old city and they told us that Easter was a huge deal and the place was full with revelers. Hum… well, there are a few Christians. Very few, and the city was bustling, but Easter is not a big Moslem holiday. From a hilltop at night we could see the city the mosques lit up in green and the churches in blue. Very little blue.

The women in Syria and Jordan have to keep their heads covered except for tourists and the few Christians. Many have to wear long robes and then there are all the variations. Some women are completely covered in black with a little fly screen to see out. I don’t think the bug problem is really that bad. To us it seems a kind of insanity to punish a woman by putting her in a black body tent in the desert. Arabs make all sorts of excuses, like the women have really sexy clothes underneath but there is no question that this is geared to reducing a woman’s humanity.

We soon discovered why they are not big drinkers in the Arab world. The drinkers have all been killed crossing the street. It is truly a life threatening adventure to do this. It was the only time we felt at all unsafe.

The old marketplace, the Souk, is the stuff of legends. Roman gates flank the market which has been in the same place for at least 3,500 years and possibly twice that long. Here you see heaps of spices and gadgets, vegetables, meat, and clothes from the full black burqa to rhinestone underwear worn by hookers or hooker wannabes. This place is fully authentic.

We hung out with some locals and their hospitality was lavish and generous. We went to one restaurant billed as the best in the city and it was indeed grand. It was a rooftop garden with trays overflowing with Arabic food. Three of us ate like caliphs and the bill was about $35. Syria is a bargain.

We took a three-hour drive to Palmyra,
a city as remote in Roman times as now. It consists of a mile long paved road flanked by temples, theaters and endless rows of columns (Romans were simply nuts for columns). This place made its fortune as a trading center but we were hard pressed to imagine how such wealth could accumulate in the desert. I guess we have Vegas but back then it was so hard move stuff. Before ships went to the orient the trade route was surging with camel trains bringing the wealth of the east in trade for the gold of the west. Palmyra was basically a port of call in this sea of sand. The Roman ruins in the East are far more complete than in Italy because of they are so remote.

One of our goals was to go to the Damascus Gate restaurant billed as the largest in the world. 6014 seats, staff of 1800, 40 million dollars, 400,000 sq ft. We got there and a real nice fellow took us on the grand tour. It looked like a stage set from a Bollywood film but built by inept children. Bad stucco and colored lights, plastic chairs and a few palm trees. In the whole place there might have been 2,500 seats and there were only about 30 customers. To us the joint next door looked far bigger and a lot nicer. There were huge billboards proclaiming its Guinness recordness but it had obviously been tarted up for the pictures and all the good furniture had been repossessed. The center piece of the restaurant is a meteorite about the size of toaster. We absolutely loved this place.

South of Damascus was Bosra a Roman stronghold featuring the finest intact amphitheater from ancient times. It looked exactly like a stadium of today with nearly every stone block is still in place. The town surrounding it is so complete that people continue to occupy the Roman buildings.

Jordan
Then it was time to bid this friendly country adios and cross the boarder to Jordan. We found a cabman who promised to take us over for $8 for 15 miles which was expensive but we did pass through 4 checkpoints in Syria, to get out, and 9 in Jordan to enter. The Jordanians took our pictures, taped our voices, made us fill out papers and fingerprinted us. The main grilling was transacted over a counter which came up to our chests. The agents at the desks behind could not see over it when seated and the shorter people could not see them so business was conducted with a screaming pantomime of hands waving over across this counterproductive installation. We were about to roll up our sleeves for a blood test when a guy with a gun called us into his office. “Sit,” he insisted darkly as he waved us onto a battered couch. He perused at our papers glumly and glared over his glasses at us. He was looking for sweating drug mules (possible) or perhaps American terrorists (unlikely). Seeing no sweat or bulges he broke into a big smile and said “Welcome to Jordan! Obama good!” This was so typical of many places we went. In many countries the common folk are friendly enough but the guys with pistolays are a bit dickish. In the Middle East you learn to not mind a guy in a uniform even when he waves an AK47 in your face with one hand and shakes one of yours with another. In Mexico I have been robbed by uniformed police twice but in Jordan the cops hold open the door for you.

Crossing the border everything looked different. The sexy underwear in the shops windows was even nastier and the homes were more prosperous with sloping roofs indicating they were actually finished. We passed lush fields and the crazy driving ceased (except for the curious habit of spending a good deal of time on the wrong side of the road). We went through speed traps every 5 miles or so and police roadblocks every 10 so it looked like there had either been a major prison break or it was just business as usual in the Middle East.

Amman was a surprise. It isn’t old at all. This place sprung up in the last 100 years and most in the last 30 so the city crawls over steep hills and looks much like San Francisco Amman’s newest sister city. The ancients didn’t build up steep hills but cars changed all that. We first went to the Russian embassy where they were their typically hostile selves. I love Russia; the rudest damn people on earth. Anyway Tyler wanted to go see a friend in Moscow but they wouldn’t give him a visa. Just before going there we were making copies for the visa and found ourselves in the 250 foot long lobby in a schmancy hotel featuring a 40-foot shark tank with 12, we counted em, 12 large sharks and about 2 million bucks in couches and knickknacks. This is where the diplomats stay. They wanted about $800 a night so we found a nice hotel a few blocks away with no sharks but included a very nice lobby cat for about $40.

That night in Amman we met street vendors who musically yell out in Arabic “we got fressssh fish here, we got riiiiipe tomatoes!” All singing out at once which is quite something. We liked Amman; modern, but not fancy. Friendly and fast without the feeling of being hustled. There are pictures of the king everywhere and he is smiling while dressed in the desert camo, with bands of bullets and the ever present curved knife. In the morning we snagged a bus to Petra in the south. We just loved the busses. 2 or 3 dollars for up to two hours with working people. On-off, on-off, a continual parade. In Petra we met the first high density of tourists on the trip. There is town next to this ancient city which it is all hotels and restaurants. A good many day trippers come by bus but leave in the early afternoon making the place eerily quiet.

The ancient city is known to many as the one depicted in Raiders of the Lost Ark. It is a city built in the depths of a red sandstone canyon miles from any vegetation. It was a famous place for tombs and once again a trading center. The unbelievable part is that most of what is left is carved from living rock. This means that many of the structures, some 140 feet high, are carved in place. To enter the city you walk down a natural stone canyon past carvings of camel caravans and gods of all sorts. The canyon is at times only 15 feet wide and becomes ever deeper until the cliffs are couple of hundred feet high. After about a half a mile you emerge to face an immense ceremonial building and as you walk ever lower into the valley it widens out and the tombs cut in the hills become more numerous. The carvings are primarily Roman but other cultures left their marks including the Aramaic speaking Nabateans. You can almost hear the faint voices of Cleopatra, Herod and Trajan in this desolate outpost.

After about 2 miles and dropping perhaps 1,200 feet we found a mile long flight of stairs to the very top of the ridge. The Bedouins call this place The End of The World and we could see for miles all round. There we found Bedouins in traditional bandoleer and dagger festooned outfits selling tea and cokes. Like all the other locals we met they were not at all weary of visitors and were unfailingly gracious. The Bedouins live all over this region and are the desert nomads still living in black goat hair tents in the searing dessert or on impossible mountain redoubts.

Petra is the single most interesting place, ancient or modern, I have ever seen. We simply could not leave. They tell you to be out of the ancient city before sunset but there were no patrols and we were there well after dark.
That night after an excellent dinner we were awakened to the sound of the prayers resonating between the stone walls of the valley…at 4am. I came to like this plaintive wailing. I liked it just a bit less when they started up just 30 minutes later for another full set. Still Petra, with its echoing prayers and high speed internet seriously rocks! As we left town we met four intrepid Dutch fellows driving from Europe to South Africa for the World Cup. They had their names and blood types stenciled on the truck's body. “You never know,” said one grimly.

And on we pushed to the Wadi Rum,
an even more desolate desert region yet further south. OK the whole place is a desert but this is where Lawrence in both the movie and in the fact worked his magic. The real and the Peter O’Toole Lawrence are held in high regard in the Wadi and we stood right where much of the movie was made and the trains real and cinematic were blown up in the war with the Turks.

We took a jeep out to an oasis and as we crossed the sand saw a man sitting in the middle of a pile of rocks laughing and waving a sandwich at us. On our way back he was still there and still laughing and shaking his sandwich. Just another man driven mad by the desert no doubt.

We caught a cab (and keep in mind we are now 40 miles from a town and cabs jsimply spring up from nowhere) and drove to Aqaba. This is the town that Lawrence surprised by crossing the Nafud Desert in summer. It locals said this was impossible at that time of year. We found ourselves on the spot called the Sun’s Anvil but it wasn’t so bad. Of course it was 65 outside and we went by car.

From Aqaba we went to the Dead Sea and man it is a most desolate place. Tyler had booked us online into a resort for $150 and we passed through the iron-gated security into the lavish lobby. Field weary and Petra-dusted we inquired about our room accompanied by a stunning woman at the grand piano. A Savile Row suited manager was distressed when he couldn’t find our reservation. Meanwhile the help plied us with fruit drinks and nut trays while Savile Row hoped we wouldn’t freak out as seemed common there judging by the Russian heavies snorting and bulging all over the lobby. One guy was paying his bill with stack of hundreds the size of a small dog.

I thought we were getting a heck of deal and went looking for the shark tank.
Eventually it emerged that were at the wrong hotel. The sign on the hotel next door sure looked like it was in front of this one and the now relieved and apologizing manager gave us a driver to take us next door. You could see that he was used to some pretty tough customers. Our driver told us rooms started around $600 and went up to $15,000 a night (plus minibar no doubt). Now our hotel would have been great but it looked like a dump after going to the Kampinski. Dern and dreck! The next day we tootled on down to the famous shore where people float around holding magazines showing how dry they are staying. ¬

The Dead Sea is far niftier than I would have guessed. First, it separates Israel from Jordan and there are no boats on the perfect sailing venue. Ahhh… well, they discourage boating as it generally ends up in gunplay. It really is salty. 8 times more than the ocean and you float like the dickens. It takes no effort to stay on the surface and you could swim to the Israeli side except your skin would fall off and you would probably be shot.

Finally back to Amman and to the airport. Our last hotel was like a prison in an open field surrounded by a fence with sentries at the gate. We decided to go for a walk and see the sunset. The hotel guard wanted to see our passports and check our visas before we could walk off the compound. Tyler soothed him by singing Happy Birthday in Arabic and he lets us free.

As the sun set over the ancient hills we agreed that we would miss these happy people with their mixed up currencies, taxis patched with plywood and high-fiving school children. Connecting out of Heathrow our plane flew over Iceland. Do I smell smoke? A few hours later they closed Europe.

TED 2010

2010-05-19T13:09:00.000-07:00

TED (technology-entertainment-design) has been running 26 years but in the last couple of years it has morphed from a conference to a movement. Like Burning Man there are those in attendance and those wishing they were there. Unlike Burning Man there are many ways to participate other than going to the physical location. Two-way live webcast venues have sprung up all over the world from a packed theater in London from which the prime ministerial candidate of Britain, Robert Cameron, gave the opening speech to a parking lot in South Africa with a tremulous connection powered by a car battery.

What characterizes this movement? It’s liberal for sure. It’s intellectual. It’s save the worldly. And it’s elitist in the best Obama sense. Many of the attendees are the leaders of industry and education and several are post political such as Al Gore and Bill Clinton. George Bush was not at TED because he was the keynote at the United Grocers Convention in Las Vegas at the same time. Nothing wrong with groceries but really, GB.

Over four days there are about 100 speakers who speak for 3 to 18 minutes on topics ranging from Lego fantasies to the sweet song of Robert Gupta’s violin (youngest ever member of the LA Philharmonic) to Bill Gate’s giving us the lowdown on his latest passion: TerraPower, a subterranean nuclear candle that once buried is never opened and runs for 60 years consuming it’s own waste as it generates power.

So much has been written about this gathering that I, like Blaze Pascal, who famously said, “If I had more time I would have written you a shorter letter”, will hit a few points that stood out for me and give you a sense of what it’s like but my real message is that you go online and see the videos of the presentations. ted.com

A lot of what goes on a TED is challenge to this grim reaper fellow we have heard so much about. Microbiologists, antislavery activists, farmers and ecologists tell of their very clever tools to beat cancer, social injustice, environmental degradation and boredom. Temple Graydon spoke eloquently about her campaign to create more humane slaughterhouses. I know, oxymoronic, but these enterprises do exist and this woman’s autism has made it possible for her to see things from the animals’ perspective. Her redesigns are now the industry standard.

A few of the presenters are crackpots and present completely unworkable ideas. Take Nathan Myhrvold’s bug zapper. This Gyro Gearloosian inventor demonstrated a laser cannon engineered to analyze every bug that passes a perimeter for bee or not beeness then incinerates just the malaria carrying female mosquito. Yes, it can tell the sex (must be the high heels). He delighted in showing us a slow-mo film of the little buggers being sent sizzling to their makers as he talked about plans to deploy this in Africa. This possible nutter is the ex chief scientist at Microsoft. They called Einstein crazy…well they actually didn’t but Myhrvold’s idea is probably unworkable. Still, he is still rightly called a genius. And speaking of Einstein, Stephen Wolfram is running for that position. The mathematician has a large and probably appropriately sized ego with his creation of Mathmatica and Wolfram Alpha. One of my interests is studying the history of mathematicians and this guy is the real thing. He claims to have invented a whole new kind of science and I for one believe him.

TED is held in the Long Beach Convention Center and for a week owns the town. Poor Long Beach, this is no Vegas but it sure feels great with us TEdsters spread out all over the lawns, in pavilions and scattered about the hotels and restaurants. We must have looked like the Eloi from H. G. Wells Time Machine but make no mistake the Morlocks are riding fast horses as many doomsayers at the conference remind.

Ironically, we fly in, flip on the lights and discuss alternative energy. We enter the lavish hall settling into the cushy seats and discuss poverty. We eat hamburgers while discussing the methane contribution of cattle and guzzle water as we lament the plastic in the oceans. Sure the cynical possibilities are endless at TED, but one could be motoring on Steven Forbes yacht Highlander with Glenn Beck. Instead, many at TED are putting themselves literally on the line by committing their lives to making the world a more graceful and just place.

No one typifies this better than Ken Robinson. This international thinker/educator laments the plight of education, his wife’s bizarre cooking and the unexplainable propensity of people to download videos of him. Delivered with humor Ken’s message is serious as he feels that we are educating the creativity out of children. On one hand he asks how it is that in ultracompetitive pre-K schools in the U.S. three-year olds show up with no resumes (“Is this all you have? You’ve had 36 months and you have done nothing!”), while in other places school’s not even an option. But TED is more than just the ivory tower observations of a bunch of fuzzyheaded intellectuals. Most folks who speak up at TED bring solutions.

One fellow, a lawyer, is vigorously trying to simplify insurance, tax, credit card and all sorts of official forms. Practical good stuff we all agree on. Nearly all, except for the lobbyists who strangle progress because many in business feel the best way to conduct business is to trick the customer. Glenn loves this idea, he does this for a living. Much of modern commercial life is based on sleight of hand. Supersizing, opt out instead of in, and deceptive marketplace herding.

TED is a patrician population peopled by protagonists. It is a multi-act play with thousands of key players. At one point I saw Meg Ryan talking to Ariana Huffington flanked by Al Gore and Matt Groening.

The movie star thing at TED is a really interesting. At one point I was in the on campus bookstore when Will Smith walked by. Now my son Tyler was in a critical scene in Pursuit of Happiness and I felt comfortable bringing up the connection. Smith is a very gracious guy and we had a nice exchange. Later I was hanging with a dance troop who had just performed. This team of dancers was the highlight. LXD, The Legion of Extraordinary Dancers (you might have seen them on the Academy Award show) redefined dance for me. I am not a fan of ballet or modern or the twist, but these folks have something new with inspiration from classic, modern dance, street, break and gymnastics. The choreographer also does the show Glee and some of the cast members came on the last day. As we were talking Will Smith walked by and I said you should go say hi to Will. They were instantly shy so I called “Will, come say hi to these great people.” He came over and introduced himself, effusive with goodwill. As he left he cuffed me on the shoulder like we were old friends. At another point I found myself at a party. It was the cool kids’ party. I never got to go to the cool kids’ party in high school but here I was speaking to Larry Page. I told him I really liked his map system. He told me he likes my crab sandwich.

Sergi Brin told about Google’s travails with China. He said that Google pulled out because the situation had been getting worse. It seems there is a booming cottage industry hacking Google from China. That, and the censorship became untenable. He did speak about the future with the hope that things might turn around.

Jane McGonigal had an interesting take on the games we play. She directs game R & D with The Institute for The Future on Sand Hill. She claims that games make the players better people; that they go on epic journeys and with their urgent optimism they experience blissful productivity. These happy people have been playing World of WarCraft for over three million collective years so far and ahhh well, the truth probably lies somewhere between a spiral-eyed army of brain fried zombies and blissful nirvana.

Blaise Aruera y Arcas brought us virtual telepresence a few years back with Sea Dragon. Now he has laid AR on top of that and mashed it with maps to the edge of time. Makes sense right? No? No wonder. His presentation is simply mind-bending. You have to see it. Go to TED.com. There he takes us zooming to planet earth. We have all done it. As you enter Seattle you see the 3D buildings pop up, then they morph into street view but with real photos. Old news right? But then he takes you inside the Pike Street Fish Market with a 360x360 interior with the tagged photos all scraped from the internet laid on the previously banked photographics. During his talk Blaze phoned some friends who were videoing the interior of the market and this was merged, live, into the static collection of shots. This is AR or Augmented Reality. Then he zoomed out the back door and skyward rushing into outer space with MS’s World Wide Telescope and took us to the edge of the mapped universe. Over to you Google.

At TED there are two Chris Anderson’s. One is the imminent curator who has taken TED from an interesting conference and made it a kind of international university accessible to anyone with a connection. Then there is Chris Anderson the editor of Wired Magazine. Chris of Wired told us of his delight in envisioning the reduction of his print edition by, perhaps, 10-fold in the near future. He envisions the print version as a lush, tactile and collectable production for those of us who treasure such things as well as a computerized edition with embedded vid, elegant search and providing all the wiz that we expect from Wired. A mile deep, a mile wide and with a very long tale/tail.

Being on the scene at TED allows one to ask major players questions and get answers. I had read that Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, anonymously bought the 10th Century Archimedes Codex (not to be confused with the Leonardo Codex). So I asked him. He said he had not. Cool. “…Hey, Bill did you buy…?”

This year’s TED Prizewinner was Jamie Oliver. This energetic chef has a scheme to teach food awareness and cooking to young children. I would hate to be a kid today trying to get healthy food to eat. The packaged stuff is so-o-o tasty! There are people in white coats staying up late to trick kids into liking food that is clearly going to kill them. Jamie says that nutrition classes are ineffective but actually putting the good food in young hands is key. His approach gives many kids their first opportunity to hold unprepared food. Simple, inexpensive and an idea that can change the world.

Michael Spector discussed aspects of his new book Denialism. He says that everyone is entitled to his own opinion but no one is entitled to his own facts. And we heard from Mandelbrot and Sarah Silverman; David Byrne, James Cameron and Svitak Adora. Have you heard her name? Well if not there is a lot about this remarkable girl online. She is a many times published author from poetry to pets. She speaks with authority and humor on many subjects and shows once again that each year the geniuses are getting younger. She’s 12.

At TED we discussed the issues big and smaller and ways to make the world more interesting; more beautiful and, in the end, even possible. From sea life to life on other planets and everything in between, TED is a good place to pick a passion. Ted.com

Archimedes, one first name like Cher

2010-02-15T15:21:00.001-08:00

Eureka is Greek for “I have found it” (the California State motto). Archimedes was a 3rd century BC mathematician who was said to have run through the streets naked from his bath after he came up with the solution to a sticky problem the king of the small Greek state of Syracuse in Sicily presented him with. It seemed that the king was worried that his gold crown had been cut with silver and there was no way of finding out without melting the crown down. Archimedes came up with the idea that he could submerge the crown in water and by calculating the displacement discrepancies between the metals, he could come up with the answer. He measured the crown and found it had been adulterated. This story is almost certainly not true except for the fact that Archimedes did discover the physical laws of displacement and the three-dimensional mathematics of nature where previously we had only Euclid’s two-dimensional geometry. Archimedes didn’t have benefit of zero or negative numbers for his calculations and indeed the Greek numbering system was only slightly better for calculation than Roman numerals so he wrote his math as prose problems with diagrams. This most revered mathematician of the ancient world dealt with concepts of infinity, calculated pi to 4 places and told us that given a place to stand “I can move the world.”

Archimedes wrote of his discovery in hundreds perhaps thousands of letters and published a few books. Yes, 2300 years ago they did have books, all be it handwritten but they looked like modern bound books. The pages were of parchment (treated mammal skin) and there were few pages but the value when transmitting ideas to other places in space and time is incalculable.
But then in the Middle Ages teaching and learning fell away and most everything written that had been accumulated for nearly 2,000 years disappeared. Books were burned for heat, fed to goats or erased and scavenged for the paper or parchment. By the 10th Century it was hard to find the great works of old and by the 14th perhaps 1% was left. But it was in the 10th Century that one of the rare pockets of learning flourished. This was in the reformulated Easter Roman Empire called Byzantium. Headquartered in Constantinople (now Istanbul) there was for centuries in the Dark Ages near universal education and this was conducted in Greek. In schools they used the ancient Greek and even Roman texts to practice grammar and even penmanship. There was a strange conflict between the love of the Greek masters and the Christian doctrine holding sway at the time. In fact most of what we have of Archimedes was eventually funneled through one man, a Byzantine called Leo the Mathematician (about a thousand years ago). But for this fellow who gathered all he could of the Archimedean texts we might have had to discover the laws all over again.

In time all of Archimedes books in Greek were lost and what comes down to us are less than precise reiterations histories if his work further blurred by Latin translations. But then from a shrouded past surfaced a certain Christian eucharist in Istanbul in 1906. It was a 13th Century palimpsest of a much earlier work. A palimpsest is a book that has been washed or scraped of ink and written over for another purpose. But when the Christian words were washed away there remained a faint online of a book determined to be the work of Archimedes. It was a 10th century compellation of several lost Archimedean texts and his greatest work, On Floating Bodies. Even this work was at least a 4th generation copy but notably it was in Greek. archimedespalimpsest.org

A British historian tried to borrow the book from Istanbul in 1907 but they wouldn’t let it out of the country so he went there and photographed much of the book. Shorty thereafter The Ottoman’s morphed into the Turks and the book was lost.

Then in the late 1990’s the remaining pages (very badly damaged by mold in the 20th century) showed up for auction in New York. A legal battle raged with Turkey claiming it and a French family trying to sell it. In the end the family prevailed and an unnamed billionaire bought it for a mere two million. He then sent the pages to various labs around the world including SLAC here at Stanford to tease out every bit of this tiny thread of history.

The squandering of our historic riches in the Middle Ages is shocking, no? But I wonder if the next age will look back on our wonton ways and feel that the people of this time were far more irresponsible than feeding Euripides to farm animals with our desecration of the jungles and driving in cars that get 18mpg. We can well ask ourselves which is the greater crime.

2010-02-15T15:14:00.002-08:00

airshipventures.com
Hey, who wants to fly into inner outer space for a few minutes for $200,000 and feel that great 8g rush on reentry? Humm…no not me. Well, how about drifting at a thousand feet over your neighborhood? Or over the ocean where you might see great whites and even shipwrecks in the shallows. Cruise past the Golden Gate Bridge and spot sailboats racing on a broad reach as you sail overhead. This is the effect from the Zeppelin Eureka, a dirigible based at Moffett Field.

How in the heck did this come to pass? Well you can credit Brian Hall and his wife Alexandra. Alex is the past director of the Chabot Space and Science Center and Brian founded and still has the helm of the successful software firm Mark/Space. One ride aboard the Zeppelin NT in Germany made Brian a believer. (from their website) “Designed exclusively for passenger operations, the Zeppelin NT (“New Technology”) is unlike any other airship in the world. Engineered with the best in German technology, the airship's precise handling, and quiet, spacious cabin with oversized windows and restroom were designed for luxurious passenger operations. Realizing that there was no experience like this, and no airship technology like this in the U.S., Brian immediately embarked on his next business venture.” Alex grew up in England near the dirigible hangers at Cardington and all her life she wanted to be an astronaut. She would have made a good one but it turned out she wasn’t quit tall enough so with the airship she says she has had to have an altitude adjustment.

California has a deep history of lighter than air because it was at Moffett filed that the Airship Macon was based in the huge Hanger Number 1, which is still there. In the 1930’s airships represented the wave of the future and the people of Sunnyvale voted to sell the land that is Moffett to the federal government for $1 if they would locate the ship there. The program was not a success but the tiny air station grew and around it prospered early avionics firms such as Fairchild Raytheon and Varian. It can be contended that one of the reasons we have Silicon Valley as we know it today is because of the Macon program.
The Eureka is a 246 long dirigible. It is made by the Zeppelin Luftschifftechnika 100+ year old firm that has been involved with aircraft and engine manufacturing for over a century. It is true that the Hindenburg was a Zeppelin but it used flammable hydrogen for lift where modern ships use inert helium. What makes it a dirigible is the internal skeleton as opposed to a blimp that is a big balloon. The skeleton allows the envelop to hold a very low pressure, just over 1 psi so if (a nearly impossible to conceive of) breech the helium would take hours to escape. The ride in this ship is similar to a hot air balloon but one you can drive at up to 70 mph and basically cruse where you wish.

I went recently with a group of friends and it was nothing short of magical. It is equal parts modern aviation with 1930’s pizzazz yielding a singular experience so visceral as to make it hard to describe. As you coast over the land it is staggering to see the amount of stuff we have built and when you coast over the estates from Saratoga to Woodside the grandeur is awe inspiring. You see dogs running for Frisbees, countless folks waving and lines of cars and rapid transit snaking in all directions. Over the mountains you see running deer and hikers stopping to look up at you. Over the ocean you see the silt roiling down from the creeks and if you are lucky enough to go over Anno Nuevo you see the Elephant seals in the multitude looking at you in curious wonder. One of life’s great thrills is to gaze down upon the fabled Golden Gate and see the majesty and unique character of San Francisco. You can see clearly the cable cars and the vital pulse of the city. But mostly you see folks looking up wishing they were where you are.

It isn’t all just sightseeing with the folks at Airship Ventures. In fact this summer there is a whale survey planned for the San Juan Islands around Seattle. The ship will make the first trip of a Zeppelin from Southern California to Canada. Alex and Brian have the youthful exuberance of the barnstormers who popularized aviation a hundred years ago (but with an appropriate eye toward safety). So they want to make it interesting by taking voyages to the fun places like Catalina and Hearst Castle.

The ship will be spending some time in the LA area each month in the first half of 2010, and will back here otherwise. You can even buy a ticket for that very special longer cruise along the coast - 8 hours to or from LA isn’t fast, but route 1 from the air must be tremendous fun!

In spite of the recession they have been getting solid bookings, including many private charters for parties, corporate events, and even a wedding! I had seen the ship flying around for several months before going aboard. I now wonder why I waited because I see the Bay Area in a whole new way; a more intimate and grander place.

Don’t think you’ll get around to it sometime or when you finally decide to fly there might be a year long waiting list like they have in Germany! You need to have this on your New Years Resolution list! My advice is go to the website airshipventures.com and book now.

Alwayson 3rd annual VC conference

2010-02-15T15:14:00.001-08:00

Alwayson 3rd annual VC conference

The socially mediated wireless Chinese cloud. This about sums up the tech industry today. Run, run at full speed and if you stop to tie your shoe you end up at the back of the pack. Dern!

Bill Gurley, a partner at Benchmark Venture Partners, was the keynote speaker at the AlwaysOn venture summit and he looked out over the crowd and said, in essence, that up to half of the venture firms will be folding in the next little while and that little while is a very little in this new rat race. Oh heck, just when I thought I was winning the rat race they brought in faster rats!

The reason for this was not obvious to me until he explained the Yale Model of institutional investing. It seems that the endowments of some of the powerhouse universities and other institutions saw fat profits in what has been called “alternative investments” these being the illiquid ones from timber and real estate to venture funds. Then came the crash in values all around the world and the endowments were stuck with assets they couldn’t sell or had to dump at a huge loss. In fact, Harvard has been one of the hardest hit (11 billion down from 26 billion) and they have had to cut back on some of the ivy covering the buildings. This is quite true as there is a multibillion-dollar science building that has been halted in mid construction. Ouch.

And some entrepreneurs are looking for funding from places other than venture firms for funding. Because it takes less capital to launch a firm today than it did ten years ago the angel investor is pretty busy. Not only that but there is funding from large corporations who are becoming more vertical like Cisco and even the CIA, as they fund projects that can benefit them. It doesn’t’ stop there. HP is doing it but, get this, so is Best Buy and Proctor and Gamble. This makes some sense but it is strange to think that you can go to a Best Buy and pick up much of the gear to launch your startup and they will pay you to take the stuff.

I met the top brand manager at Proctor and Gamble back in early 2000 when Tim Koogle and Jerry Yang had the bizarre notion that I would make an ideal keynote speaker at a national Yahoo conference where brand managers would come from all over and explore how they could be part of the Internet revolution. Tech companies were side by side with Taco Bell. How do you put a taco online you ask? The answer is you couldn’t then but now they can with the new social tools like maps and Twitter. P and G actually opened an office on Sand Hill in 1999 but soon closed it. Now they are back and their cash is the old fashioned kind, large and liquid.

I see the venture industry as having followed the same path as the motion picture industry in the last century. Early on there were a smattering of small studios and then bam, a gold rush. But most studios lost money and closed, leaving a few big operations and a lot of small independents. Like the film business the venture business had always been about home runs and as in baseball most pitches do not score points.

David Cowan at Bessemer Venture Partners said that one thing limiting his ability to uncover and fund new ideas is that the top VC’s are overloaded with inventory and sitting on all the boards as well as providing the guidance that they have been brought aboard to do takes a tremendous amount of time. Leave the nest already! And since new deals are slower in arriving it becomes hard to justify bringing more folks in into the venture firm.

David raised another interesting point that in the current climate there are a great number of clean tech companies being funded and unlike software they are building tangible products that take a lot more money to build. If you extend the capital requirement graph of all the clean tech firms you will see a monster delta between the amount of possible capital and the need. So most of these firms are just not sustainable. Deepak Kamra of Canaan Partners brought up the fact that it takes 9 years from inception to an exit. During this period follow on capital and VC expertise has to be continually pumped into the startup.

Tim Draper of Draper Fisher Jurvetson Venture Partners talked about one of his favorite subjects, China. Tim is the ultimate free trader and he and his partners were an early investor in Baidu, the Chinese search engine and the only one that gives Google a run for its money. Where a lot of American business folks approach the Chinese dragon with trepidation, Tim respects them as fearless, confident and tough. He feels that we have in them worthy partners that will make us better if we stand up in the marketplace with the same attitude.

But with all this, the mood is one of cautious optimism. Back at the beginning of the decade the VC and techfolk in the Valley seemed a bit depressed and even though it has picked up some in the last few years it is still very hard to make money in the VC game. This is because the upside is not realized until there is a way to fully capitalize the company. In the real world most everything is about showing up but in the VC world it’s about the exit. There has to be a stock offering or the firm has to be sold before there is dime one to the VCs and these events are far less common than 10 years ago. Sometimes neither strategy is possible and the firm is held as private equity with a much slower trickle of profits from operating income. Of course the worst scenario is that the firm folds and generally all is lost at that point.
In The Valley you hear a lot of talk about failures being celebrated. You hear people actually saying it is good to fail that it teaches valuable lessons and so on. This is crap. Sure you can learn from failure like if you slam our fingers in a door you learn not to do it but believe me the better lessons are from success. It is far better to be like the founders of Google. Succeed at the first thing you try. Now that’s a lesson!

Back at the AlwaysOn conference I found myself surrounded by biz school types. Now I feel about advanced degrees for business about like I view cooking school for chefs. The real world has far more to teach than business school. But if you have time to kill by all means hang out in school. If you have an MBA and you write about business and you are full of hot air people will think you’re an idiot. But if you haven’t got an MBA and you run a restaurant and you write about business you are merely considered colorful.

So what’s with these VC types anyway? Are they a bunch of wealthy geniuses who have offered up the capital to bring us a new age, an age as significant as when Gutenberg pulled his first page from the press but muuuuch faster? Well yes, that’s about it.

In fact a little history is warranted. Gutenberg was a failed mirror polisher back in the 1540’s. His idea was to manufacture and sell penitent mirrors (a small polished metal disc on a stick) which were taken to witness a holy relic and, like a nonworking camera, the pilgrim brought the image back to his village. Even the limited mind of a Dark Ages plowman wouldn’t fall for that and the business tanked worse than Microsoft Vista. But his second invention was combining a wine press, easily replicable lead type, oil based ink and a grand vision for a new Bible. He went to angel investors for the research money and in 18 months produced his first page. In short order he printed the most valuable book of all time and everything changed. Venture money made this possible so if you sometimes think that angels and VCs are as useless as shower curtain-ring salesmen just think about how long it will be till you next pick up a device that has been made possible by the quick wits of the entrepreneur and the swashbuckling risk takers on Sand Hill Road.

So today there are reduced expectations and the VCs job is harder. The parties at the end of these conferences are sober, dignified affairs and VC’s look almost dull compared to the old days. I well recall back in the 90’s when angel investor extraordinaire Ron Conway held a charity auction and one item, golf with Tiger Woods with Warren Buffet as the caddy, went for over $720,000. Ahhhh the fun we had.
alwayson.goingon.com to see the conf. video

The Happy Body and The Village Doctor

2009-08-24T15:45:00.000-07:00

Aniela and Jerzy Gregorek live with their 4-year-old daughter Natalie in a Zen garden in a modest redwood sheathed house in the Glens in Woodside. Creeks and waterfalls cascade from all corners and small buildings peak out from under the trees. It is an oasis in already tranquil neighborhood.

In about 7 months I lost 78 lbs and achieved a level of fitness that, when factored with my age, is actually the fittest I have ever been. I have been stronger and fleeter but I have never been as integrated as I am today. Like many of us I tried a number of different techniques to get off the couch and to eat less. I kept losing my way because I repeatedly saw the process as just that, a process, something to be endured. I now see that the exact techniques are secondary and success comes not from a short-term set of practices but simply the commitment to become the person you think you want to be. What I mean is that many of the techniques for weight loss work and there are any number of exercise routines that will make you fit but they really only make a long term difference if you surrender to the idea that this is the way you are going to run you life and not something just tacked on as an expedient. A critical element is that exercise and diet are all of a part. Diet plans that don’t integrate exercise, and the reverse, rarely have much effect. I say it isn’t about technique but at The Happy Body there is certainly technique and it very specific.

Most people go because they want to lose weight but if you think that you will just be given a diet program you will soon be disabused of that. When I first showed up Jerzy took a look at me and it was pretty obvious I need a remodel. But why would I listen to him? On my arrival I saw a rather gorgeous woman leaving. “Who is that I asked, she can’t be a client she looks way to fantastic.” Oh, she is a client and if you do exactly what I tell you, I guarantee others will be saying that about you.”

People go to THB and for many reasons. Some need help with arthritis, others are just feeling old and some are accomplished athletes who want to be at peak fitness. My long time friend Jim went to increase his muscle mass. He has never had a weight problem. He is ramrod straight and he has an excellent diet. With this training Jim felt that he could perform later into life with a higher level of general fitness and here is someone who knows a great deal about the subject having been a driving force in the senior fitness movement for many years. He is approaching 80 and he looks to the future with optimism and enthusiasm. We used to jog together but I was to slow for him. I still am.

Barry is bit more typical. He needed to pull back 50 lbs and did it as planned. He shares with me the practice of working out regularly and keeping his eye on the scale. He and I discovered the same thing. Food wasn’t the enemy. In fact, quite the opposite.

I recently had lunch with Roger and Betty (he had the Caesar salad with chicken, dressing on the side, she the stuffed artichoke) both very active folks about my age and they had been down a similar path as me with regard to trying all sorts of different programs. Betty tried Jenny Craig, Nutrasystems and the gym scene. All this proved to be ineffective and one day Betty ran into a friend who was in the “you look terrific phase” so she signed up and soon her husband was in going too. A couple going through the Happy Body program is ideal of course. Roger and Betty are financial advisors and so quite often are desk bound but Roger is also a lacrosse referee and can now run enthusiastically back and forth for 50 games a year with his newfound fitness. They have a certain glow, which is once again plain old optimism about the future.

If you have a dramatic weight loss the reactions are predictable from: “Hey, you look good” to “Wow, you look terrific!” to “Whoa, are you dying?” Many of us have known people who were losing weight due to a serious illness and when half the people think you are one of them then you know you have your ideal weight. I am not kidding. When you are heavier and maybe 30 or 35% body fat, your face is fuller but get down to 10 or 15% and all the lines show up like cracks in a dry creek. They say that when you hit 40 you can pick your face or your ass but let me tell you at 60 you get neither so you had better focus on muscle, blood pressure and cholesterol.

The Gregorek’s have a new book coming out titled The Happy Body: The Simple Science of Nutrition, Exercise and Relaxation about how they deliver the goods. They tell you all about how they have become the dynamos that they are. Their personal goal is to be at the highest level of fitness for their entire lives and so far they are right on track. They are glad to share their path and the book will be available here as soon as it is printed. In it they tell you all about their exact strategy to become and stay fit and I can tell you if you follow the book it is guaranteed to work. But who really does what they tell you to do in books? The fact is that the human touch is what we all need and that’s why attending their program is where the fat hits the fire.

At THB they stress above all youthfulness. Youthfulness is an attitude not an age. I can honestly say that two years ago I felt as if I was nearly used up. Today I see no horizon at all and am eagerly looking for the next engrossing project.

Jerzy and Aniela happen to compete on a world stage in Olympic weightlifting so naturally they love this path and many of the exercises they give you are based on their this discipline. I have modified some of the exercises but building on the core instruction I have found my way to a work out I now do for 50 minutes a day, six days a week. I use dumbbells, a rubber tube, straight bar and let gravity do its derndest. I never thought I would like crunches and sit-ups but I do a wide variety of them as well. I used to work out in a gym for years but it always seemed like an obligation, something to get through like a kid forced to chew through a pile of spinach. Until I was introduced to the gradual increasing approach at THB I generally resented working out. But ever the contrarians Aniela and Jerzy use some techniques that a few coaches object to. Their work out doesn’t involve much sweating, hyperventilating or any endurance at all. Object if you will but look at them; they positively radiate fitness. In the end the best workout is the one that you will do day-in-day-out so if you like the marshal arts or yoga or running I say, terrific.

My friend Ilona has a great take on her time at THB. She has always been quite fit but twenty pounds beyond ideal. She felt that the workout she was doing didn’t make her happy and much of the food she ate wasn’t fulfilling. She heard that Jerzy and Aniela were telling people that they could tune you up to peak performance so she went. Now years after her last session she tells me that she credits much of her physical and mental integrity from her participation there. As she become healthier and more confident her daughter took notice. This 13 year old had a less then happy body image with a weight problem that bothered her. Ilona didn’t want to push her but the girl’s food choices were leading her down a dark path. Based on her mother’ success her daughter decided to go to THB and as a result she was able to reach for the brass ring and today is self posed 17 year old who likes the way she looks and how she feels.

So think of the things you did in the past and try to recall if your trainer ever said to you “Just do exactly as I tell you and you will get the body that you imagine for yourself. You will earn it, you will own it and (baring illness) you can keep it all the way to the finish line.” At The Happy Body this can happen to you.

If you think this is too good to be true or is some sort of advertisement, well it isn’t. I know some folks will go there will not succeed. But I tried a number of ways to come to peace with my body and it worked for me.

Village Doctor
If you picture a kindly old sawbones with a stethoscope in one hand and a lollypop in the other dispensing tried and true homilies about common sense and good health under a chestnut tree on the village green you might want to swing that around to 2009 where you will find instead a small focused practice where good common sense is dispensed for sure, but tempered with the latest advances in both science and service. Behold, the concierge practice that is the Village Doctor. villagedoctor.com.

First a note on how this works. Retainer fee or concierge medical practice is basically an agreement between a doctor and a patient whereby the doctor sees fewer patients and the patient pays more for the basic office services. Frankly some will say it is too expensive for them and others will see it as appropriately priced. The fact is that the annual fee is not covered by insurance. But with the decoupling of insurance, the physician and the patient are freed from the hustle that has become a part of medicine and which can (not necessarily will, but can) create an adversarial relationship between a patient and a doctor.

The three doctors include the founder, Dr. Eric L. Weiss, a long time emergency room doctor who is also a medicine travel specialist. At one point he was the doctor for the San Francisco International Airport. As a result The Village Doctor is recognized as a top travel clinic for the nation. Dr. Prerana Sangani is an internist with a public health background and Dr. Raquel Burgos has an extensive background in pediatrics. The other staff members ensure that scheduled visits start on time and route you to your doctor at any time for emergencies. There is a lot of talk about wellness as opposed to treatment but let’s face it, unless there is time to actuate the specifics then it becomes just more jibber jabber.

In addition to the regular practice The Village Doctor has taken the wellness formula and rolled out The Wellness Studio that is open to the whole community and is separate from the medical practice. This from their website: “Incorporating selected complementary alternative medical (CAM) therapies and successful fitness programs, The Village Doctor now offers a truly integrative approach to wellness. Specialists are able to work independently or collaborate in creating a highly comprehensive personal healthcare program. The Village Doctor Wellness Studio, a newly remodeled eco-friendly studio, is conveniently located off 280 in Woodside. Patients of The Village Doctor Concierge Medical Practice receive the unique benefit of their primary care physician’s inclusion and oversight of their individualized wellness programs; however, the Wellness Studio is very much open to the public.” wellnessstudio.com The Center provides classes in Yoga, Contour and Pilates. There is acupuncture, physical therapy, massage and nutrition counseling. Hummm, I feel better already. Dr. Weiss has also included a healthy item on the Buck’s kids’ menu. A kid’s chef salad. Check it out.

I made a commitment to try the practice for a year and see what happened. I am now 60 years old and for the last three years I have been a patient of The Village Doctor. I’m not there a great deal but I have come to see it a bit like a traveler crossing the Golden Gate Bridge. The actual time I’m on it is not that much but it is a great way to get where I’m going and I have been going two places. First I have needed to be sent to specialists in a couple of areas focused around injuries. It is a typical and not very interesting story.

The second thing and this has been the really vital (vital is such the perfect word here as I means “related to or the characteristics of life”) Dr. Weiss took my vitals during the first checkup and said, “Hey, you fat slug. Get fit or die.” Actually he didn’t say this but this was the message I heard. He let me know in his gentle way what I already was pretty sure of, being way overweight and staring at the universe from my vantage point on the couch was a life threatening reaction to a long-term problem.

So what to do? He suggested that I give The Happy Body folks a call. Now I had done that already about a year before and got some fellow on the phone who sounded a bit scary. He basically said to come see him if I was through being fat and lazy…well I wasn’t. And, unlike Dr. Weiss, he really was that direct.

Anyway Eric said I should probably go see them and I did. But that’s another story. Now when I go in for my check up I am happy with my vitals. My numbers are in the normal range and my blood pressure is actually low. It turns out that a guy in his younger years celebrates great biceps and abs. As he get older it’s more about good knees and a solid back and as he, and of course she, gets up there, it’s blood pressure, cholesterol and glucose that become very interesting to you.

So there may be no spreading chestnut tree but there is good medicine at The Village Doctor.

TED 2009

2009-02-21T17:09:00.000-08:00

First a definition. TED is real, virtual, exclusive, inclusionary, site specific and global. TED started 25 years ago as a convocation of explorers examining the universe of Technology, Entertainment and Design. Today it is still about all this and more. TED is quickly becoming a big part of the world brain. I have attended for several years and TED has grown, as have I. Much like a space probe using the gravitation of the planets they pass to slingshot for more speed I am using TED as a pivotal point for my own life as I move forward to the challenges ahead.
In fact it was at TED in 2008 that I made a commitment to myself to whip myself into the best shape of my life. Happily I stuck to it. My commitment to myself for this coming year is to…well, you will have to watch this space same time next year.

TED has two major aspects, the formal stage presentations and the socializing during the intervals. At one point I found myself chatting with Bill Gates, Al Gore and Robin Williams. Robin asked me, “Aren’t you the Buck’s guy?” I admitted I was and Al said, “I go there.” I realized that Bill was a Buck’s customer as well. Just like you.

The generally serious academic presentations are broken up with dance troupes, piano jockeys, comedians, singers and even a live, remote youth orchestra from Venezuela. We have all heard youth orchestras and they are generally enthusiastic but a little raw. José Antonio Abreu’s (a TED prize winner) Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra draws from 250,000 young musicians, many from impoverished areas and it was, to my ear, the equal of any big city orchestra. These kids made me feel that the future was in very capable hands. Much of the conference is about the future, transcending shorter term problems like the economy. Where are we going as a people on this beautiful blue ball? Big notions and individual personal achievements are presented like the man who walked, not skied or sledded, to the South Pole. We swooped with Uli Gegenschatz the inventor of the winged flying suit as he showed us a film of him zooming through the Alps. He is actually working on a new suit where he jumps, flies and lands without a parachute.

Bill Gates filled us in on his world plan for fighting disease and his teacher training programs. At one point he pretended to release malaria infected mosquitoes into the crowd from a small jar saying, “Why should the poor be the only ones who get malaria?” When the anticipated laugh line didn’t materialize he added that the mosquitoes really didn't have malaria. For some reason this was interpreted by the press as dangerous or the rich had it coming and other unkind kind things. Hey, press folks, it was a joke! In fact Bill has a very good sense of humor and if you don't believe it, look up his retirement video on line. Chris Anderson, the Curator and host of TED, said as the pretend mosquitoes flew off that here was Bill releasing more bugs into the world (a line that did get the laugh). Bill Gates is a hero for the ages and to be in his presence is a tremendous honor. Later in the week I stepped into an elevator which held him and a service person with a cart on which rested a fruit plate. Behind the waiter’s back I mugged a snatch at the fruit. Bill gave me a conspiratorially permissive wink and I grabbed a strawberry. A small exchange, and for me indicative of the good will and mutual respect the very famous show the less so at the conference.

On TED.com you can see all the talks so I will mention a very few of them. P. W. Singer updated us on the burgeoning world of remote warfare. Combat robots in the water, on the ground and in the air. Compassionless killing machines. Very cinematic stuff and not in a good way. This was followed by a group of vocalists called Natural 7 who have taken hip-hop, jazz, R & B and rock and come up with a truly original sound using voice and electronic modulation to rock the house.
At one point I found myself at a table with a small group of Tedsters both typical and extraordinary. We were discussing the survival of the oceans with Silvia Earl the eminent oceanographer who was one of the winners of the TED prize. Next to me was the director of Stanford’s design school, Banny Banerjee. Next to him was Ram Shriram and his wife Vijay. Ram was an early investor in Netscape and helped launch Google. There was also Glenn Close and her husband the biotech exec David Shaw. I am a bit conflicted about Hollywood celebrities. We know who they are and they don't necessarily know us. This imbalance can make striking up a conversation strained. There are those of them who exhibit a kind of a grace that says, “It’s OK, you can talk to me” and Glenn one of these people. She was not wearing makeup, exhibited no movie star spin and she looked you in the eye. I was bold enough to ask her about her current TV show and she was very happy to talk about it. Well, I don't mind discussing my work and so why should she? Folks are cool at TED and even I forbore from blazing away with my camera. Also at the table was Dan McClellan who is completing Oceans, which we had seen rushes of earlier in the day. I have never seen such an intimate look at the lives of ocean creatures. Easily the most costly and possibly the grandest documentary to date.

Tim Berners-Lee led the audience in a chant, "raw data now!" After singlehandedly inventing the World Wide Web Tim now wants to have free flowing raw data which he sees as more like human thought than the gigantic encyclopedia the Internet has become. Ray Anderson invented the mundane seeming carpet tile. But here is a manufacturer who isn't content to just make a product. His company is approaching a zero % carbon footprint. This segued into a presentation about the mummies of the Capuchin monastery in Palermo, Sicily. There we were looking inside an Italian tomb which spoke to culture, religion and taxidermy over the last four centuries. I have for many years been a big fan of the Capuchins who had the curious habit of turning the bones of their followers into furniture.

Willie Smits is Dutch Indonesian and he was a tremendous hit. Willie was in a village marketplace one day and found a sick orangutan dying in a trash heap. He nursed it back to health, gathered more of them and eventually established a sanctuary where there are now over a 1,000, but this isn't the whole story. From his husbandry of the apes he found creative ways to reforest vast stretches of jungle which have been laid to waste. Now years later his Masarang Foundation has reestablished agricultural people living in harmony with the natural environment.

Margaret Wertheim enchanted us with an unlikely topic. She crochets coral reefs. Margaret observed that coral, cactus and many other living creatures grow with hyperbolic geometry. This potato chip shape yields high surface areas. She began crocheting in wool a representation of a coral because of her passion for traditional female handcraft combined with a love of natural physics and concern for the threatened reefs. Hundreds heard her message and contributed wool coral for a vast exhibition presently on exhibit in L.A. I learned a fact that had thus far escaped me. Coral reefs grow atop extinct volcanoes at the same rate as the volcano’s cone degrades into the sea. A delicate balance indeed. Margaret and her sister Christine have established The Institute for Figuring to celebrate this and other arts. The reef is part AID’s quilt, part Bayeux Tapestry with shades of general relativity and sitting at Grandma’s knee.

Another presenter, Dale Chihuly, has made a reef too with his sexy, scintillating glass art; opposite yet complimentary to crocheted wool. Another expression is the monumental architecture of Daniel Libeskind. His controversial (could it have been any other way?) design for the rebuilding of the World Trade Center is all angles and sharp corners. In fierce opposition to the work of Frank Ghery. Daniel wants to struggle against improbabilities and sees his designs as a triumph of optimism over pessimism. A bold vocabulary for big ideas.

Shai Agassi presented his Better World electric car program. He wants to provide all the new cars for entire countries with replaceable batteries and projects a 2 cent a mile future. A charismatic speaker with a big following, but his numbers don’t add up even as his investors get in line to prove the critics wrong. Thank heavens for the big thinkers even those with unlikely ideas. They said man couldn’t fly too. At least one speaker was just plain wrong. Take respected Columbia professor Dickson Despommier’s scheme to build practical food farms in 30 story buildings in places like midtown Manhattan. I am very familiar with the costs and problems inherant in tall buildings and I can find no way into this idea. He gets very good press but like other technical schemes with crippling debilities the desire to make it so is not enough.

Jill founder of SETI was another TED prize winner. She and her team are scrubbing the cosmos for signs of life. Intended or unintended she is pursuing global harmony. A simple formula. Find intelligent life elsewhere and we feel as one here on Earth. Bonnie Bassler talked about bacterial communication. Those little buggers are communicating using a system called quorum sensing. They chemically twitter each other and we are beginning to understand their language. Nicholas Negroponte of MIT brought out his little green laptop that was a twinkly eye mote 3 years ago and now accounts for about half the laptops in the world. Talk about an idea worth spreading.
Elizabeth Gilbert wrote Eat Pray Love to huge acclaim and asked us to ponder what it might be like to be a creative person who might have her best work behind her. Elizabeth, no way kid! Jay Walker sang the phrases of the very flexible English language and showed us a video of 5,000 Chinese students learning to speak it in a single gigantic classroom. Scary and lovely. Other presenters included Sarah Jones who with her 14 NYC characters had us dying with laughter.

Small ideas, big ones, bigger ones and 1300 of my close friends. This is TED to me.

Newt Gingrich

2008-11-06T14:22:00.001-08:00

Newt was visiting here in The Valley as he does from time to time. I asked to see his driver’s license and when I looked at it I asked him how we were supposed to believe a man who lies about his weight?

More noise on Green no one will read

2008-11-06T14:21:00.000-08:00

IT ISN’T EASY BEING GREEN
“OK we’ve been peeing in the pool long enough. When it was just a few kids it was one thing but now that we are north of 7 billion we need to knock it off or the pool will be closed!”
Back in the 60s, hippies were preaching that we were wrecking the environment and there was a movement called going “back to the land”, as if had actually ever lived on the ‘land” in some previous life and not the suburbs most of us had actually grown up in. But they had their hearts in the right place even if raising goats for profit was really not going to pan out. My wife Margaret and I were a couple of those dreamy idealists. We moved to the country and put up a barn. We installed solar panels and composted everything is site. Margaret recycled when it was very hard to do. Our wooden-sided Morris Minor went 63 mph, got 38 mpg and we heated the house with wood and dogs (we still do). Fortunately we bought our land in the mountains overlooking Silicon Valley and not some backwater in eastern Idaho. Our scheme to raise buffalo (for what, hides?) didn’t exactly pan out. It seems they really do roam like the song says. So we got real jobs and here we are today.
Now the green revolution has caught up to where we were 35 years ago and everyone blinks with dilated eyes thinking its something new. It isn’t new but now it is more then a lifestyle. It’s necessary for life itself.
I just read an article by a leading editorialist, Paul Johnson, in Forbes. (I read Forbes because I want to see how old people think). Paul talks about the bogus global warming scam and he laments seeing newfangled power generating windmills wrecking his view. He discredits them as a medieval invention and not to be taken seriously. Of course printing was a medieval invention so maybe everything from that era isn’t so bad. It is simply beyond my ability to understand how some folks can complain that others are trying to tidy up the planet.
A big question many people wrestle with is: do people cause detrimental environment effects and if so how much? The answer is irrelevant. Slothful, pollution spewing lifestyles are not supportable on a personal or a societal level. Whether we are actually ruining the climate or not our lives are made less sustainable and ultimately less fun if we continue to pile up more patio furniture, appliances and all sorts of things that clutter out lives instead of making it more graceful. Will cleaning up the environment fix that? Not directly but decoupling from the couch and doing something more real than watching Dancing With The Stars might make a person more content.
Nearly everyone I talk to says TV is evil but they are in its grip and therefore, powerless. How did this devolve to a discussion of TV? Well TV is perfect example of an unsustainable model. It uses electricity to take control of one’s brain to stop one from experiencing actual life. TV makes you eat more and consume products you see advertised that until that point you didn’t even want (this isn’t you of course but, you know a guy who knows a guy who has three TVs or even five in a single home).
Today it seems that every topic (certainly when discussing the green movement) circles back to the economy. Who is responsible for our current state? We can blame the bankers. We can blame Wall Street or we can level our guns at the politicians. But the real culprit is much closer to home. Like Pogo said, “We have seen the enemy and it is us. “Let me say that by no means am I preaching. I am as much a part of the problem as any of us but I do recognize that we individuals, in concert with classic good ol’ American Capitalism, have created an untenable situation. We are both victims and beneficiaries of all the genetic evolution and cultural predispositions to acquire stuff. Once again TV is a perfect metaphor to see how stuff is driving us crazy. It is not uncommon to see three four or even five controllers on someone’s coffee table (perhaps we should call them control centers). Each of these controllers has dozens of buttons which open ever more screens giving us options for our viewing pleasure. This array of controllers give us hundreds of options. Couple this with all the other devices like cell phones, computers, cameras, cars, kitchens and we have hundreds of buttons we can push to control…what? Well just a few functions really. We have hundreds of buttons we never use and so many choices that there is no way to make the best one. Try picking the best digital camera from the hundreds of choices. Confront an unfamiliar microwave and it will stop you dead. In a commercial kitchen where intense cooking takes place a microwave doesn’t even have a start button just a dial with a minute hand. How did we get to the point where all out cool stuff is actually anti us? The free market is merely satisfying out desire to amass stuff, a normal human response. Instead of gathering more spear points and fur blankets we surround ourselves with more horsepower and ever more complicated gizmos that seem to be complex for the pleasure of the manufacturer trying to fool us with shiny buttons. Is it any wonder that folks take home loans that they can’t pay in the future? They are just trying to find shelter.
So am I against an unfettered free market? You bet I am. The free market gave us the great tobacco conspiracy where we were free to believe the great lie from the 40s and 50’s that doctors recommended cigarettes. Or car companies that fought the seat belt and airbag laws. Exactly were we put the pin in the map to establish the rules is the job of government but without serious punishment for lying and corrupting the information the process is crippled.
To a large extent it is the borrowing from our future that has gotten us a fix. If the future continues to be more lucrative than the past you can borrow today and pay back with more plentiful money later. But if the future turns out to not be bigger but the same size, or horrors, smaller then you have basically ate yer cookies up on day one of a four day camping trip.
It is impossible to separate the perpetrators and victims. We are locked in a tarantella of capitalism and desire and there is no clear path out of this crazy dance. We enjoy a society where the market is free to sell us things we really don’t want, bundled with the things we do. A large grocery store has as many as 10,000 things to eat. Most of the things are heavily processed foods because that’s the profitable and tasty stuff. Much of it is not good for the body and a lot of it really isn’t food but extracts of food with chemicals added to change the color, texture, taste and is, in fact, artificial food. The food industry is at war with us.
How can we get out of the forest of over-choice and over-consumption and find a way to sort out the beneficial from the harmful? Well, we actually have to march counter to our genetic imperative of gathering ever more stuff. Everyone seems to agree that more things don’t deliver more happiness yet we seem to keep piling it on. Just like watching your diet and exercise we need to ask ourselves if that next thing will bring us more joy or more anxiety. We have always been told that our economy must grow, that our piece of the action should get ever larger. Growth for growth sake! But is this really true? What if we just grow to full size - and live?

GOING GREEN

Tony Perkins played host to about 600 green entrepreneurs and venture types at the new Cavallo Center on the far side of the Golden Gate Bridge. Here is an old military base having been beaten into plowshares in the form a resort run by the estimable Post Ranch folks. It is very nice, in a Marin precious sort of way. The repurposed barracks with the broad lawn sweeping to the sea and the incoming sea is grand.
Chuck Reed the progressive mayor of San Jose told us about his big plans green up his city like no other city. He wants to do much more than be carbon neutral and his plan was well articulated when he spoke at Going Green. It is well worth a look. You can go to the web site and see the entire program and Chuck’s plan in particular. Chuck is so green he’s getting black and blue trying to find the money to put his proposals into action.
The conference brought folks from all corners of the green movement, except ironically the hippies who have either moved deep into woods or morphed into real people. What constitutes green anyway? Well, in the Sept 11th issue of Time Magazine Scot Case with TerraChoice surveyed products in an unnamed big box store that claimed a green component. From Time, “The results were startling: of the 1,018 products they surveyed, all but one failed to live up fully to their green boasts. Words like nontoxic were used in meaninglessly vague ways. Terms like Energy Star Certified were in fact not backed up by certification. And the list of bogus claims went on. This is one small corner of the green movement and it illustrates the unregulated atmosphere we see today.”
There is both a great deal of duplication with overlapping technologies coupled with uncertainty in the markets in the green movement. Many of the green companies are hardware and personnel intense. Focusing on solar electric gives a good illustration. Making solar equipment is a long term play. Firms need at least four years of financial support and in the case of large solar arrays as much as 10 years. The solar entrepreneurs are hoping for at least part of the subsidies that the fossil fuel and nuclear industry have gotten over the years but even though the long awaited federal tax credits have been renewed it is a slim lifeline for these vital solutions.
Because so many of energy systems are large infrastructure plays it is essential that there be a floor below which energy pricing cannot fall or the companies will not mature. In the 70’s there was a solar movement. There were actually solar panels on the White House installed by Carter but Reagan laughed them off the roof and that made sense in the cheap oil era. Without a price floor, solar electric companies are reluctance to invest the money necessary to launch large array plants. As a result this business has moved to other countries. Germany and Japan are not known as particularly sunny spots but these countries along with Australia and Israel are running hard to bring ever increasing solar electric power on line.
It is unfathomable why politicians don’t get behind solar unless they are subject to skin cancer and actually hate the sun. Some folks are big behind renewing the nuclear option blindly forgetting that we never solved the disposal or dispersal problem. To pick life-killing gamma rays over life-giving visible light rays is environmentally, socially and economically inexpedient, unless you are in the pocket of these concerns. The actual cost of fuel must be totaled by adding cost of extraction, pollution and sustainability. Fossil fuels are limited, polluting, and will run out. Biofuels take tremendous amounts of machinery, land, water and processing. Wave power is very limited and has serious hardware problems. Wind is a good option but it involves big equipment with many moving parts and ever increasing environments problems of its own. Some of these mills are being designed with 400 foot blades that make a good deal of noise and don’t seem to turn when on the hottest days when peak power is required Only solar, and large desert array solar, has the potential to free us from the problems of the fuels above. Few moving parts, proven technology and free fuel forever when it is needed on the hottest days.

Bill Clinton lamented on the John Stewart show recently that if we had had the imagination seven years ago to go solar we would have a great deal less incentive to keep the oil producing in clover. We could have halved our oil imports, slashed our outflow of currency, created jobs and cleaned up the pool.
Co hosting the Going Green conference was none other than Scientific American. I was able to spend time with an old friend and one time next door neighbor from the Upper West side in NYC Bruce Brandfon who was then a reporter for Mother Jones Magazine and now is the publisher of Scientific American.
Scientific American has a new magazine to go with their 165 year old one. It’s called Earth 3.0 and is all over the green topic. It brings the gravity of the SA crew to this relatively new topic. Hummm maybe Paul Johnson will consider writing a column.
Solar and large array solar is a particular area of interest to me. Scientific American had a cover story in January where there was a good rundown on the notion that we could replace all the electricity we generate from fossil fuel with solar collectors. The authors proposed that we store energy as pressurized air underground to be used to run turbines at night. In fact there are many different large array schemes which use everything from concentrating mirrors to boil water to run turbines to parabolic concentrators powering high temp photovoltaic. Different systems answer different climate considerations but one thing is sure, the best places to put the systems is in high sun areas. The problem is we don’t have extra grid capacity to ship the power. It is practical to send power high voltages from thousands of miles but we need the wires to do it. Around 700 billion might pretty much cover this…oh gosh we just spent that. Darn, just missed it. Well since we are using the “T” word we have to ask ourselves and our politicians if we really believe in the future and if the answer is yes the obvious solution is solar.
John O’Donnell most recently of Ausra a large array solar firm that is building a PG&E plant near in Southern California) brought the muscle of Kleiner Perkins to bear on this problem by securing financing from Vinod Kosla, also a speaker at the conference. John and I were recently lamenting the state of energy development and commiserating on how far we have to go to get on a sustainable energy footing. He is working on projects that will lower the sea level from its rising future. John’s figure for how much land is needed to install an array that would power the entire U.S. grid is 92 sq miles of land (a trivial amount of desert land available in America).
John makes the point that changing light bulbs is a small act and many small acts will add up to a lot of small changes. We need big changes so perhaps we should focus on changing politicians not light bulbs.
I think that it is tragically misguided that we are trying to beat the price of gasoline back. We need high gasoline prices to encourage multiple car passengers. But won’t just the rich be able to drive? Well take Europe where the cars are tiny and the people seem happy enough.
For a full account of how we can fix our economy, get out of oil jail and create millions of jobs check out Van Johnson’s new book The Greencoller Economy.

TED 2008 .

2008-04-18T16:46:00.001-07:00

I had the great privilege of attending the TED conference again this year. TED stands for Technology Entertainment and Design. This singular event brings together great thinkers from all over the world…and me. The text is a three and a half day conference where charismatic speakers, artists and all sorts of optimists, skeptics, believers and off the chartists come to the stage all day long and tell about their passions.

Jill Bolter Taylor is a neurologist who, in the style of a research doctor crossed with a revival preacher, told us about her harrowing experience with a brain aneurism. She was both doctor and patient and her delivery was at once chilling and uplifting. She was a standout in an outstanding crowd.

The theme this year was Big Questions like What Is Life? Who better to discuss this than Craig Venter, the genome guy. Craig both thrilled and alarmed a good many of us. He is attempting to create artificial life and some feel that his alchemy may lead to chaotic outcomes that are the stuff of horror films. Myself, I feel his defense a bit dubious when asked how he would keep microbes under control. He more or less said, just to trust him. Some, though, see him as the possible savior of mankind by developing microbes that sequester carbon or offer beneficial pharmaceuticals or new biofuels. Look him up online and you will see why he is at the center of Big Ideas.

Thomas Kerns of the Guggenheim showed us ambitious plans to put a Guggenheim Museum in every garage, that is if it is a Middle Eastern garage. There are several new museums with that brand around the world and many more planned. Who would have imagined that? Where will all the art come from…hum I guess we will just have to make more art. That sounds like a good idea for all concerned.

Several physicists were displaying their wares. Garrett Lisi being one of them. He is working on a grand unified field theory while surfing the great beaches around the world. Since much of this work is thought experiments this is actually doable. In the April issue of Scientific American Lisi is alternately called a genius and a crackpot and that by biggies in the field. Much fun to play witness to. Well, someone is probably going to crack that Big Idea and it would be great if it is the surfing physicist.

Neil Turok is a physicist of a different stripe who holds the mathematical chair in physics at Cambridge. He’s a cosmologist concerned with the inflationary period after the Big Bang. Neil is a multiverse man. If I understand him correctly he postulates that the BB was a result of two universes colliding and instead of coming from nothing came from a whole lot of something. Neil was a TED prize winner for his promotion of science curriculum in Africa. The study of physicists (I think this would be called physicistology) who put forward these grand ideas about the nature of reality is a particular interest of mine. There are so many theories bumping into one another and we must not forget that of all the competing theories of reality only one, at most, can be right. I certainly can’t tell you which one but we have seen ideas nailed in place by Aristotle, Newton and Einstein come loose over time. As the quantum and celestial mechanics toil under the hood of the big machine we seem to lean toward righter then wronger though.

As you can see there was some pretty detailed science at TED. Robert Lang brought us back to earth then shattered our understating of a different kind of space-time continuum. He is an origami artist who, using a computer program, can take a simple sheet of paper and turn it into a near living piece of sculpture. I half imagined he was just using magic and I had to ice my brain to follow along with him. He was followed by John Knoll (the programmer of Photoshop) of Industrial Light and Magic. He showed how the marvelous special effects in the movies today are made possible using tools he is developing.

Isaac Mizrahi the clothing designer/lounge act gave a funny scattered talk about his funny scattered life. I heard one person comment that they found it strange that this fellow was at such a highbrow event. (I’ll bet they say that about me) but I find him very now, urban and highly amusing. He’s a sort of a Judy Garland crooked-smile talent but with less tragedy.

David Griffin and Wade Davis of National Geographic projected large images of this nifty planet we call home. When you see nature photography made big it has a lasting impact and brings home the fact that this is the planet, this one right under our feet, is the one we are all concerned with keeping clean.

Benjamin Zander is the conductor of the Boston Philharmonic but he is much more than a conductor. In fact, he is a force of nature. Here we are at TED where one of the mandates is to explore how to save the world while celebrating culture. Zander gave a riveting talk about the relevance of music and then tossed out handfuls of the words to Beethoven’s Ode to Joy from the 9th, to the audience. He insisted everyone sing along and, like a patient teacher, made us start over five times until, we got it right. This coincidently (perhaps) is the theme music from Kubrick’s Clockwork Orange which basically put paid to the modern world. A rich, rollicking and memorable experience.

Then Al Gore. Here is a towing figure of our time. Articulate, funny and looking like a central casting image of a world leader. We simultaneously celebrate him and lament what might have been had they been able to count the votes in Florida. He is a TED regular and his message sharpens every time he points out our clear folly with regard to our stewardship of the Big Blue Marble. Unlike some political figures Al Gore’s image seems to purify over time and hearing him is real pleasure.

Harvard astronomer Roy Gould and Microsoft’s Curtis Wong announced for the first time the World Wide Telescope. Fly through the galaxies and zoom to the edge of the universe. Bloglidite Robert Scoble said it made him cry when he first saw it. Hey, don’t get it on the keyboard, Bob! Now we have for the heavens what Google did for the Earth.

It isn’t all serious at TED although there are messages in everything. Nellie McKay is a singer who strolled onto the stage with an air of confusion, her tiny self dressed like a nice mom on her way to a baby shower. She stepped up to the grand piano and proceeded to thrash it within an inch of the wood pile as she belted, crooned, and purred her provocative, sexy and, to some, offensive lyrics (go Nellie). She wowed me but I know a couple of people who felt put upon when she skewered women’s lib. Sacred cows taste best. Well this is what makes TED what it is. Generally I am not fond of is being a fan. Bandwagons, team spirit and even yelling at kid’s soccer makes me feel uneasy but at TED I am a fan, a participant and I feel lucky to be able to be there.

Thomas Dolby heads up the house band and they play between the speakers. Other musicians and comedians are layered in as well. This offers a way to change direction and keep the synapses firing on all 8 cylinders or maybe four with battery back up.

Chris Jordan is a photographer who I first met at sea when he had the helm of a 120 foot schooner off the coast of Maine. We were sailing in the Penobscot Bay with a group of environmentalists and we were disheartened by the fact that the fisheries had been so devastated in that area. The Grand Banks had been the richest fishery in the world and now the only thing taken commercially is the lobster. Ironically this great delicacy is a kind of marine cockroach which subsists on garbage. Chris is a photographer who highlights the plight of the planet with his pictures of the material world. He takes a snippet of time, say an hour or a day and produces huge composite prints of how many plastic bags are used in a minute or how many airplane con trails would fill the skies in a given time. His work left a deep impression in my forehead.

The TED stage was decorated , festooned even with some of the cultural artifacts collected by Jay Walker (founder of Priceline). These included a page from a Gutenberg Bible, a real sputnik and various Paleolithic skulls. As you can see if you look around Buck’s I am a great believer in stuff. “Hey, Jay I’ll trade you a Soviet Space suit for your space toilet”.

The road to TED after 24 years will make a great movie one day. It was founded by a Richard Saul Wurman, a wild man who is reputedly both a loveable and an unrepentant rascal. After nearly 20 years he gave up the reigns and Chris Anderson (formerly of Woodside and founder of Business 2.0) became the curator of the event and it seems there was a falling out over some issue that left Richard feeling bruised. In a grand and heartfelt segment he came back and was warmly embraced in every respect by Chris and the gathering, including a few who had been there at the very beginning. TED is about inclusion and participation. One of the parts I found the most compelling was a simple question and answer segment about the shape of TED in the future. People had elaborate ideas on where they thought the conference should head and you could tell that the participants felt deeply connected.

After the long days with all the various breakout opportunities there is of course a party or ten each night. There were stars from The Valley as well as real movie stars (there goes the neighborhood). I was chatting with Forrest Whitaker about a new movie he is making and I think the Hollywood folk felt comfortable as no one had the bad taste to pose them for photos (much as I wanted to).

Bob Ballard the deep sea explorer (found the Titanic, PT 109 and many more) is the Galileo of underwater exploration and he took around the Big Below in his deep sea rovers. After diving to depth we spent some time in the trees with an arboreal explorer Richard Preston who spends days at a time in the tops of redwoods 40 stories in the air including climbing Hyperion the tallest living thing. He described to us the ancient ecology in these tress but he is really up in the branches because, like so many presenters at TED, he finds that his passion plugs him directly into the vibrant grid of life.

Nissim Taleb brought us his strangely compelling but annoying idea that cataclysmic events are solely the result of cataclysmic events beyond our ability to predict and that all people (except for himself) are …more or less, fools. I read his book the Black Swan and am not convinced but he persuades many and his bravado is fun to watch.

At one point there was a panel of luminaries assembled to discuss “the new media.” It was to be broadcast live by the BBC but there was a technical problem so the group just sat on the stage in front of about 1,000 people waiting for the uplink. Then someone started heckling from the audience in a heavy Scottish accent. Everyone turned to see Robin Williams giving the stage-bound panel a hard time. Up he sprung and filled the void with an buzzsaw of quick cuts that left us in tears like ‘we are here with a live debate that is not being televised, much like the last 6 years in this country”.

For me the most important presentation of the event was a surprise from the noted MIT musician/composer Tod Machover. Death and the Powers is an opera scheduled to premiere in Monaco in 2009 that Tod has composed about a rich guy who downloads himself into a computer with the idea of living forever. The staging of the opera includes a luminous library of moving, glowing books and robots running about the stage. It is a relevant topic about the near future. It is ironic that when Machover isn’t developing his opera he is working on communication tools with Dan Ellsey who is profoundly handicapped and is locked in a body with only a glowing light stick attached to his head for communication which he uses to point to his computer. With this tool he is able to compose and perform music which he did for the TED audience. So here is opera about downloading a person into a computer and in real life Tod is working on behalf of a man who he is up loading from a damaged body into life. Here they all were on stage with machinery and several people all to the benefit of a single man brought out with great difficulty by special airplane from the east. I have always wondered at the social ramifications of a great deal of effort to the benefit of a single handicapped person. Then it struck me that it wasn’t just about Dan. In fact it was about all those involved on stage, those back at home, others - who might dream about being freed from all sorts of limitations and even about me. It was a grand opera to see Dan enjoying his ability to perform for this group of interested people. So I have a new and much less judgmental view of this process.

Over the years I have been lucky enough to have been a participant in Love-ins in the 60’s and later antiwar marches, Burning Man, Esalen and TED. These are all hotbeds of learning and compassion and amazingly none of these offer any diplomas. So after attending 23 elementary schools, two high schools and five colleges and universities the only diploma I have is from Perfect Paws a dog training school. Heck I’ll never be able to get a job.

(In the pictures for search: Bill Joy, Pierre Omidyar, Larry page, Gino Yu, David Blaine, Max Levchin, Dean Kamen, Zem and James Joaquin)

new thoughts

2008-02-11T14:01:00.000-08:00

I Sing The Tech Virtual

Peter Friess, the director who brought the Tech Museum of San Jose back from the brink has just wrapped the four month Body World’s exhibition which brought nearly 300,000 visitors to the museum. This was a great opportunity for the people to see the old museum because it is changing and evolving into...well, we shall see. The Tech has launched an innovative new program called thetechvirtual headed up by the amazing Nina Simon. Nina and her staff using the environment developed by SL founder Phillip Rosedale (and now a member of the Tech Board of Directors) have created a virtual Tech Museum. Maybe you were busy watching Desperate Housewives when you should have been trolling the Internet so you might not know that Second Life is a virtual community with real people represented by on screen avatars. These are essentially 3 D models of one’s fantasy self. There you interact with others in an environment that is part Sim City, part video game environment and a large slice of Burning Man. It is not just a playground. IBM has one of the largest populations of peoploids there. Many folks meet in SL to have business meetings and some of these are taking place at the virtual Buck’s just like they do here in the real restaurant. What, you have still not been there? Give it a whirl. Second Life now has voice and embedded videos so you can make your virtual space look just like home… sort of.

Hundreds of thinkers and designers are creating exhibitions for the virtual museum and the best ones are going to be built in the real museum. Imagine an open source competition for the design of a museum dedicated to technological innovation. From the website, “Rather than relying on in-house designers to conceptualize and create exhibits, The Tech has launched a collaborative online platform to support a diverse community of designers, artists, scientists, and interested folk conceptualizing and prototyping exhibits. Projects are proposed and teams formed on the web at thetechvirtual .org and then proto-typed in Second Life. The Tech is offering exhibit design tutorials, design reviews by museum professionals, and the chance to see your virtual ideas become real exhibits. The Tech intends to design all future exhibitions in this way, working with outside individuals to bring their unique creative vision and expertise to the museum to create unusual, extraordinary exhibitions. The Tech launched this project in Dec 2007, and is piloting with an exhibition (to be mounted in RL in June 2008) on technology in art, film, and music. Ten virtual exhibit prototypes will be selected for development in the RL exhibition, and their creators will be invited to San Jose for an awards ceremony and exhibition opening in June 2008.” Exhibit designers are working all over the world on this project.”

One university in Australia is even using the competition as a curriculum for their design students. Another team includes a well established physicist and an 18 year old computer wiz. The physicist had been working out design parameters respecting certain of the ‘laws” like gravity and magnetism. But these are not laws in Second Life but rather dial settings it takes a kid to teach the new rules. Human emotions stay the same but all the rest of reality is pretty much customizable.

Peter believes that this will be the way the museum of the future will be designed and as we see, everything (except maybe Apple products) is heading this way. Many millions have been raised from foundation grants for this project.

One thing about SL is that every avatar has a real person running in real time. But as shops and exhibitions develop there will be robotic virtual you’s possible. If it sounds like you have fallen through the looking glass, it’s true.

WORLD’S LAST LARGE
SHARK CAUGHT
If nothing changes in the next 10 years this is a likely headline.

Around 100 million sharks are caught annually worldwide. Nearly all have their fins chopped off after which their bodies are tossed overboard. The fins sell for an average price in China of over $100 a pound and are used for shark fin soup. This soup is served at fancy functions as a status symbol.

Most Chinese have no idea that sharks are being wiped out across the planet in order to provide them with the ingredient for what they know as “fish wing soup” and the people behind this awful trade have no incentive to tell them. We all love tigers, polar bears, rhinos and many other endangered species but unlike sharks these animals have vigorous support and there is a great international pressure to preserve them.

Most shark fisheries are unregulated. Only three shark species are protected but in the open ocean when fishermen are faced with a single fin from a whale shark having a street value of perhaps $6,000 it is no wonder that these fins can be seen in shops in China. Because the Chinese are becoming much wealthier, there is an ever great demand. If we can alert the Chinese to the fact that sharks are actually the apex of the fragile ocean food chain then they will be better equipped to change this practice before it’s too late. Leveraging millions of dollars of pro bono media support, San Francisco based WildAid has mounted the largest ever awareness program of its kind routinely reaching hundreds of millions of Chinese through hard hitting messages featuring prominent Chinese including Yao Ming as well international Olympians.

I have been hovering over so many good causes and have dabbled in some but I have always worried that my effort either would be insignificant or off topic from my interests. Now I can combine my love of the oceans with an awareness program that has a profound cost benefit ratio. I am convinced that we can help change a cultural viewpoint with WildAid’s campaign during the Olympics. WildAid.org

A Bookstore Curiously Devoid of Books
At this time Buck’s “the smallest bookstore in the world” has no book for sale which meets the criteria of being written by a local author and having three flattering pages about me. That is if you don’t count that tired old wad of paper actually written by me, (Breakfast at Buck’s, you can buy it here but you can get on it Amazon. [that’s where I buy them myself] for as low as $1.22 in like new and even brand new condition (ouch!). Right now I’m the 1,096,475th most popular but if you buy a book I can shave a few points. At least I beat 16 Great Fondue Parties - a real hit I’ll bet in 1957. By this time everyone has read this tired old saw so it’s time to pick up a snappy new book. The one I recommend is Two Years Before The Mast (Amazon used $2.37 ). Well, not so new but still one of the reel gud bux. Written in the 1830’s by Richard Henry Dana it tells the true tale of a lad who was a freshman at Harvard when he convinced his parents that his eyes were tired (typical kid move) and they needed a rest so he signed on as an able bodied (but green as the grass) seaman and shipped “before the mast” from Boston to California. The book is a tale of innocence and a story of one young man coming of age in the rough, cruel and lovely place that was early California.
Many of you will have read it in school (trust me Moby Dick is still great too) but it is high time that you split the spine of this one again. Before the Gold Rush, California was known as hard service and it stretches one’s mind to take in the incredibly difficult work the seamen of that era were expected to perform. Hauling cargo through the surf, going barefoot because shoes don’t heal like feet and subsisting on a dog’s diet. The ships that plied the coast traded the goods of the east and Far East primarily for cow hides which were shipped to New England to be made into saddles and boots which came back to be traded for more hides. Early California was built on blood and bone. Down the Peninsula at that time in Woodside there was a single saw mill and a few Spanish and Portuguese farmers. The Indians had skedaddled a generation earlier and it would be a long time until all the Aston Martins showed up.

The only real action was on the coast and the happening spot was the first capital, Monterey. Many of the buildings from the early 1800’s are still there. San Diego was just a small farming community. In San Francisco there was the Mission and one ranch and LA was miles from the coast where the downtown is today.

Dana writes in dramatic writerly prose about life at sea and the rhythm of the ship. He says that “a ship is like a ladies watch, in constant need of repair.” Imagine that just moving about required all that sail trimming and anchor setting. Each vessel was like a little country and the captain was the lawgiver. Flogging was common and in heavy weather there was no rest unless you were washed overboard or fell from the rigging. It seems amazing today that anyone could endure the life but they did because even though they were driven hard it was a large way to be, a vigorous and manly life. Until about the last hundred years young men have yearned for the sea since the first boats. Alas, since the close of the age of sail this is no longer the case.

Dana tells us the sailors were mighty homesick and mail was sent both ways. Because there was no postal system it could take months or years to get a letter and some letters chased about the seas until they became dust. Today we can Skype for free but back then one had to write a letter in long hand, then you went down to the wharf and gave it to a ship that was headed to the ocean that your sailor had shipped out for. Ships generally “spoke” to (hailed) all the ships they passed and by and by triangulated on the recipient. An amazing amount of mail found its mark. Not unlike the light from a distant star the words were frozen in time and they might finally reach the right ship to find the sailor has died. The seas hold a great many fish, and secrets.

Two Years Before the Mast puts the reader into the very rigging for a big blow of a tale. I’m not stocking it here but if you snag a copy make sure that you get the one with an afterward written by Dana when he came back in 1869. His was the only voice about what things were like in California before gold was discovered and he gets a good deal of credit for popularizing the West.
A Note on Wikipedia. In looking up a few details of the book on Wikipedia I clicked through to gutenburg.org. I had heard about it but never been there. Here are thousands of books available as text or audio read by real people or even machines. All in the public domain. So you can get Dana’s book for free with a few keystrokes.

2007-10-11T17:39:00.000-07:00

Betty Monroe runs into her Father at Buck’s

My new friend Betty Monroe came into Buck’s a little while back. She sat next to a photograph on the wall and there she saw her father looking back from a picture taken in 1918 when he was mule skinner (archaic term for a mule wagon driver) for the army. On Nov. 11th, 1918 he with 30,000 of his comrades posed in the shape of the U.S. Emblem for a photo at Camp Custer in Battle Creek Michigan. Thomas Mole shot a series of ten photos all on patriotic themes using the ten’s of thousands of soldiers who were about to be sent to the European theater. On the day the Emblem was shot the shooting stopped in Europe. All ten are available from the Library of Congress. They were posed with artificial foreshortening in that there a few dozen men in the first rows and progressively more to the back making it look as if it was shot from a much higher place than the actual 70 foot tower Mole used.

The crowd at Ft. Custer was the largest in the series and it is in this picture that Betty saw her father. She says she can locate him because he is right next to one fellow who was goofing with his hat as are many if you look closely. Very like in high school when a few of the fellows are always trying to ruin the group photo. That makes sense. Most of these young men were just out of high school.

Betty and I looked at some of the letters her father wrote telling of the Great Influenza Epidemic which swept through the military camp in Georgia where her father did his basic training. After the war fizzled Betty’s father returned to farming, married and raised a family. His daughter became a nurse and married her grade school sweetheart who eventually ended up In Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7th 1941 “A day that will live in infamy forever” according to President Roosevelt. Betty’s husband was on the Oklahoma, a ship that was bombed so completely that it quickly rolled over. Her husband was on an upper deck at the time and was thrown into the water, from there swimming to shore. Betty said that the survivors were allowed to send two postcards home telling their families they were alive. She still has hers. Some 30 years later the Oklahoma was raised and some of the seamen’s lockers were opened. There they found Seaman Monroe’s locker and in it a well preserved photo of Betty’s at her high school graduation.

Today Betty’s a spry and engaging resident of Mt. View and after retiring from nursing tells me that she reinvented herself as a painter and world traveler. She has painted many hundreds of stunning paintings and been to 57 countries, so far.

AlwaysOn and On On On

2007-10-11T15:14:00.000-07:00

In 1993 Tony Perkins launched the Red Herring Magazine with Jaron Lanier on the first cover. It is particularly fitting that at the recent AlwaysOn conference at Stanford Jaron was a featured panelist with a host of other big thinkers. Much that transpires in The Valley is a result of the folks who regularly attend and present at the many conferences hosted by Tony Perkins. These gatherings grew out of the Red Herring conferences that are now the stuff of legend. I fondly recall standing with Ron Conway at The Chateau Marmot in LA asking Pamela Lee Anderson why she was at an Internet party and she said, “Honey, I own the Internet.” In 1998 this was actually true as she was one of the first online megahits.

Well you can feel the pages fall off the calendar like in an Orson Wells movie as we zip into 2007 and all anyone seems to be talking about is how to save this creaky ol’ planet (with the unsaid subtext of continuing to make ungodly piles of money). Me, I think we ought to just deep freeze our heads until we figure out the planet saving but short of that I guess we will have to buckle down and do the hard work. Through these conferences we get to tackle some of the big issues.
But first: Entertainment, with the OnHollywood conference. Yippee! We get to hang out with movie stars. Let’s face it, much of life is entertainment. Who isn’t crazy about sitting in front of the flat god and absorbing mind numbing canned laughter and zipping back and forth on Tivo between Curb Your Enthusiasm and The View (I know that you only watch PBS and are exempt but trust me someone is watching). One thing about Hollywood is that it is completely American and so far it can’t be knocked off in a Chinese chop shop. We own Britney (for good and bad) and if you, Ms. International Consumer, want her you have to pay us. Of course even Hollywood is slipping off its slimy pedestal and getting all conscious n’ stuff. Jeff Skoll and Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth sparked many to action followed by Thank You for Smoking and Fast Food nation. Hey, I want Key-rap from Hollywood! If I wanted a lecture I’d give it myself. Entertainment is supposed to be like those 8% real fruit juice drinks and these new, evolved moguls are diluting our water with more juice, darn them!

On the strictly business side the AlwaysOn Stanford Summit deals more with technology issues although we did take political timeout for a keynote from Senator John McCain.

Misc notes on the candidates in 2007
McCain is running hard for President and although I think his politics are wrong headed the man is a towering figure in a field of candidates many of whom would be hard to bring home mama. Ron Paul is just bizarre. He is so far off the chart that even the Libertarians won’t have him and even though Dennis Kucinich makes sense on paper, he is scary in a lives-to-close-to-the freeway-fumes sort of way. Fred Thomson is amusing as the sleepwalking “nominate me if you run out good ideas” candidate who tells the religious right he is too busy (sleeping) to go to church. And Mitt Romney? I love the question as to whether we should elect a Mormon. Statistically (and I say statistically, metaphorically) at least a third of the candidates are atheists and are lying about their spiritual beliefs. But not Mike Huckabee who told an NRA convention that “angels guided my bullet into the head of the antelope” and “I’m sure there is duck hunting in heaven.” Maybe he was kidding, but still. Giuliani is the prochoice, progay, prodivorce, guncontroling big city Democrat ahhh Republican. Barak Obama was famously criticized for not being “black enough” at the same time being criticized for pushing his way onto the national stage too soon in our racial maturity because he might be “too black.” So far it seems likely that Hilary Clinton will be elected. In fact it has to happen. Look, we elected Reagan because he was folksy, Schwarzenegger because he was a famous, smack talking, movie star and now we will elect Hilary because she was the First Lady and that’s just damned odd and odd is what we do.
The Stanford Summit is a three ring affair with CEO pitches in one room all day long. Every few minutes a presenter gets up and gives a five minute rundown about their companies. What I find interesting is how much solid effort is behind sometimes small, nitchy applications proving my old axiom that, “It takes a lot of effort to do stuff.” On the main stage panels discussed the latest buzzly sizzle like: collaborative filtering, the disintermediation of social friction, swarm publishing, interactive advertising, and disambiguating signal to noise. Humm, maybe we know where the missing bees are.

Joe Schoendorf of Accel Partners is always hanging ten on the wave of the latest international trends and he reminded us that Moore’s Law drove the last 40 years of innovation and that globalization will drive the next 40. An old Indian scout once told me that to see the trail you have to look to the horizon because it is vanishingly faint but our new scout, Joe, tells us to look right at our feet. He said that those of us who remember disco (my words) are just getting comfortable with Mega, Giga and Tera but the kids are living in a Peta, Exa, Zetta and Yoto world and that one in eight new couples met online up from about zero ten years ago. Joe loves to remind us that we are ripping forward at warp speed and he always makes it sound like fun.
Phillip Rosedale demonstrated Second Life and we say that is still a bit hard to use when even he had a little trouble with the controls. As most folks around here know Second Life is the virtual world where boys will boys and more, and girls can be dragons or screaming hot bartenders in taverns, where the alcohol is digital and the pick up lines are literally typed lines of text. Social issues in SL include civility, honesty, productivity, aesthetics and all the issues we face in real life but, of course, it isn’t real. Or is it? In another virtual world Craig Sherman, CEO, Gaia Online told us about a teenager who wanted to buy a virtual hat but his mother wouldn’t give him the money at the time. Later the lad was at a real trade fair and found the Gaia booth where they had cloth versions of the virtual hat. He was heard to remark as he bought the cloth hat (with no hint of irony) that he wasn’t able to buy the real virtual hat but he had a real fake one. The emerging virtual worlds and the weird turn video viewing and producing is taking are blending business and entertainment. Like an Escher print we are producing and consuming at the same time following such Yoda-like characters as Lanier, Kevin Kelly and Ray Kurzweil.

At Tony’s GoingGreen conference in Davis, Zem Joaquin introduced Bill McDonough as the keynote speaker. Many of us met Bill for the first time at the TED conference in Monterey a few years ago. McDonough is a soft spoken optimist about the future of society seen through his architect eyes. His ideas are so profound that sometimes you have to rewind to make sure you heard correctly. If you don’t know this man’s work check out his speech and I believe you will be stopped in your tracks. alwayson.goingon.com/permalink/post/18864. And scroll around in this and some of the other conferences. Join AlwaysOn. It’s free and you become an instant Silicon Valley insider. You really can attend the conferences virtually or virtually go in person or ahhhghhh!... you figure it out.

Forget Saving the Earth

2007-08-15T16:45:00.000-07:00

There has been a great deal written about, spoken about and screamed about with regard to saving the Earth. But what do you think the Earth feels about it. Let’s look at the situation from the Earth’s point of view for a mo. If you buy the theory that the planet is about 4.5 billion years old (as opposed to the theory that it is 6008 years old and was build in six days) then we have a span which, by most measures, is on the longish side. For about a billion years the place looked like hell, I mean the Old Testament Hell, all fire and lack of amenities. The the surface was molten and oxygen could not attempt to be a gas yet. Talk about global warming! As soon as a crust formed, volcanoes started popping up like a puppy on a griddle with much the same result.

Eventually continents formed but they moved around a bunch -- beach front became mountain tops, became deserts became ice bound and this kept on until today and it’s still going on. As time stretches back things become vague but we are pretty sure that in the Permian Epoch (about a quarter of a billion years ago) either a meteor hit or someone spilled a really big latte and 90% of the species turned to compost. Nature did its thing until 85 million years ago in the Cretaceous period (many think it was the Jurassic but that was movie magic) and this time 75% or so of the species got wacked.
Today many folks are worried about a tiger here a whale there. Back in the 90’s when small pox was almost eradicated there was actually an advocacy for keeping some of the microbes alive for biodiversity sake. This either makes perfect sense or is completely crazy. You can make the point both ways, nay? Anyway, to even question some enthusiastic citizens pressing need to raise condor chicks with $50,000 puppet parents or fly injured monkeys 5,000 miles to monkey repair shops is considered insensitive. If you suggest that ½ million dollar heart/lung transplants for newborn babies might be a questionable use of resources you are considered a cad. But some people profess that Man is some sort of divine creature and we should spare no expense for glory except for cell research which is the Devil’s Tool for subverting the human race. Sometimes I wonder, if man is so special why are there so many bugs? And if Man is the last word wouldn’t we be better engineered. What’s with the nail on the little toe? It’s hard to cut and, at it’s best, is not that good for climbing trees.
So we have ol’ Planet Earth in one corner and tiny toe-nailed Man in the other. Some folks subscribe to the Gaia Theory that the planet is a living creature in danger of Man killing it. Well there really is a gulf between biology and geology so unless you are an American Indian or maybe a Buddhist it really is a hunk of slowly cooling rock. One thing is sure though, Man is poisoning the air, water and land. We bury radioactive waste which will not cool for 100,000 years and we lament that we are destroying the planet. Well we aren’t. The planet if anything is amused at our grand notion and it doesn’t give a rat’s potootie about how we manage our little span of time. The planet is actually doing quite well but our tenure can be made quite unpleasant if we act like a bunch of frat boys on Spring break shooting out the TV and stuffing all the towels into the toilet of this Motel 6 we call home. We should change the slogan from Save The Planet” to “Save Ourselves.” We need short term solutions to our short term problem. Heresy, insanity or at best politically incorrect suicide? Well the fact is we should become very selfish. We should clean our rooms and not for the next 4.5 billion years or for the future of The Human Race but for ourselves, in this lifetime, for our children in theirs and for our fellow revelers all around the world.

Editorial
So often I hear that the planet isn’t supposed to be messed up. In fact things are working out exactly as they should because of the simple fact that they have worked out like this. We can nudge the future but it is a pretty big ship to turn in new direction. If we want to affect change we need to realize that spoilers like Ralph Nader are good place to nudge. Ralph Nader thinks he’s funny by making himself the impossible choice and subverting the last election by urging his hollow headed supporters to vote for him. His point was that it makes no difference who is president. Reeellly? Trust me it does because we need to look at the SHORT term. Forget what the distant future holds. We need to save ourselves now and by now I mean the next four years.
As inflection points go, the tragic war in Iraq is a pretty minor one, unless it touches you personally which being in the here and now it certainly can. We do hit inflection points and go backwards now and then. I don’t think we are actually going backwards right now so much as stopped from making progress for a time (this is hard to define unless you take a longer view). Some big retreats include the Dark Ages and a smaller one could be WWII. But for sheer catastrophe try a gigantic one like the potential of global warming. Some of the things that set us back like rocks from space blotting out the sun are plain old bad luck. Others like the sacking of Alexandria (if the library had not burned we might not have lost 1,000 years of progress) was a political inevitability combined with a fragile intellectual infrastructure. But this new danger is perhaps the biggest challenge yet. Wouldn’t it be nice if Ralph worked on this one.