1. New York City is awesome
2. The holiday season in the city is equally great

On the subway there other day, I saw someone throw himself between the doors to let these two old women catch the subway. Doesn’t sound like much, but it was a happy scene.

Then on the same subway, there were three guys who sang Christmas carols. But they didn’t just sing regular carols, they sang carols with a beatboxer. That made it awesome. I recorded a bit of it below.

I love the holidays in the city.

This is on top of the $25 billion loans for the “Big Three” U.S. automakers that the government approved in September to help keep the lights on². (It is important to note that they are requesting this new bailout because the other one will not come in time.)

I don’t believe they deserve this bailout, or any significant help from the government. There are three major reasons why I believe so:

1. Inability/refusal to adapt to changes in the industry and their competitors
2. Lobbying against bills for better fuel efficiency and emissions restrictions (which in part is caused by #1).
3. Lack of innovation

Those three reasons (variations on being lazy as a corporation) are why they are deservedly in their current position, and why the responsibility of getting out of this mess is theirs, not ours.

Slow to Adapt

Their downfall has been a long time coming. Their revenue year over year has been very lackluster, especially when put side by side with their competitors. Below is their revenue growth since 2004, compared with Toyota [³ ] [⁴ ]:

GM vs Toyota: Revenue Growth since 2004

Why does the chart look like this? GM’s massive costs in addition to their boring, uninnovative gas guzzler vehicles.

GM’s cost-per-car is much higher than their competitors, with the lion share going to it’s healthcare. Back in 2005, the cost of healthcare per car was $1,525 as opposed to Toyota’s $201⁵. Now, I’m not saying giving your employees benefits is bad, but the benefits costs for idle and non-efficient workers can cause these costs to skyrocket. According to the same NPR report, the utilization of their factories was at 85%, far below its competitor. In addition, it takes GM longer to produce a car than Toyota does. The writing on the wall has been there since 2005. They’ve had enough time to adjust.

Back in 2006, Toyota’s revenue grew faster due to it’s production of lighter cars and trucks, as opposed to giant gas guzzlers that GM was making⁶. As gas steadily became more and more expensive⁷, GM kept on making ridiculous fuel inefficient SUVs. Sure, the profit margins were huge ($10-17k per vehicle⁸, but when no one wants to spend $60 to fill up the tank, people will stop buying. $17k x 0 SUVs sold = $0! Simple math, yay! Meanwhile, other companies are building hybrids and smaller economical cars have been selling like hot cakes.

Lobbying against bills

I think that lobbying against better fuel efficiency and reduction in greenhouse gases is absolutely ridiculous and irresponsible. I find it abysmal that these large corporations are lobbying against something that can be proven to improve the environment and help fight this whole global warming thing and succeed in blocking or swaying legislation.

Even more ridiculous that they use arguments like this to prevent a 2007 Bill to restrict emissions:

This trial is about whether or not states have the authority to set their own fuel-economy standards. And we will argue that they don’t⁹

That’s complete bullshit. But good for them, they made a few bucks with their stupid SUVs and now they’re fucked. Congratulations, you’ve proved short term benefit is always best.

Lack of Innovation

If they didn’t spend so much time better fuel economy standards, they could have used that time to create better, lighter cars that can actually compete in the marketplace today. But no, they could sit comfortably on their fatasses letting their profit makers bring in the money. I was talking to my brother the other day (he knows a lot more about cars than I do), and he said that all of GMs brands make the same cars, just branded differently.

Thomas Friedman of the Times wrote a great Op-Ed the other day called “How to Fix a Flat“, which resonated with me a lot.

In the first paragraph, he refers to the $25 billion bailout in September. The Chrysler CEO claimed that the money was going towards a “way to enable the car companies to retool for innovation”. Are .. you … serious? What have you been doing instead of innovating? Where did all that money go?

Oh wait, right, lawyers can be very expensive.

Well, that money was well spent right? Hm, but wait you need more cash now? To what, innovate? Sounds like a well run business.

They shouldn’t get this money because it just gives them the right to continue with what their doing. I imagine it’d be hard for the government to really direct where this money is being spend and how these companies are run. Left up to the current execs, doesn’t seem like much would change.

He ends his article:

Lastly, somebody ought to call Steve Jobs, who doesn’t need to be bribed to do innovation, and ask him if he’d like to do national service and run a car company for a year. I’d bet it wouldn’t take him much longer than that to come up with the G.M. iCar.

Where to Go From Here

As Phillip Greenspun says, let them go bankrupt. Chapter 11 bankruptcies are made for this purpose. It allows them to file for bankruptcy while keeping the company alive but let them reorganize their business. That solution makes complete sense to me.

Many say that if they do go bankrupt, consumers would not go near any GM car because of fears that the cars would not be under warranty, would have declining quality, etc. Again, Phillip Greenspun comes up with a pretty good solution, having the government insure their warranties instead of bailing them out.

Phillip Greenspun has been writing a lot on the topic recently. He goes through stories of him renting a GM vehicle and how terrible the quality and other related topics. Read his blog here: Phillip Greenspun

Job Loss

Now, the biggest issue with letting them go bankrupt is the massive layoffs, and the subsequent ripple effect across the nation. This is the part I haven’t really come to a conclusion to. It’s a very tricky issue. A lot of the people who would be laid off wouldn’t deserve to be. It wasn’t their fault that their company was mismanaged into the ground.

I feel like the people who would be laid off would be better off at a company that won’t be stagnant for years at a time like GM was. But in the economy, there isn’t much cash and not many places for them to go.

The loss of millions of jobs would be devastating to the already horrid economy. That would be the only reason why they should get the money, and it looks like they will because of this. It should definitely not be misinterpreted as helping out the company as it is saving the US economy from bottoming out.

President of Change

Looking forward, I believe that President Obama will bring great changes to the country. Not only is he an advocate of eliminating our dependence on foreign oil¹⁰ through alternative energy, he’s also taking a very public stance against lobbyist¹¹. Having him at least acknowledging these issues is a huge step forward in the right direction.

While this is still all just talk, I have confidence that he will follow through and that the US will be moving in the right direction once he gets into office.

1. G.M. Says U.S. Cash Is Its Best Bet
2. House Passes Stopgap Spending Bill
3. GM's 2007 10K report
4. Toyota's 2008 SEC Filing
5. GM vs. Toyota: By the Numbers
6. Toyotas profit rises, rivals GM
7. Energy Information Administration: Oil/Gas Information
8. SUV Fact Sheet
9. Automakers Challenge Vermont Emissions Law
10. Senators Introduce Legislation to Reduce Gasoline Consumption by Half a Trillion Gallons
11. Obama’s Transition Team Restricts Lobbyists’ Role

1. GM
2. Lobbyists
3. Fixed income traders/structurers
4. People who voted for Prop 8

A lengthier, more in-depth post to come soon. Just wanted to throw this out there.

1. No matter what you do, the camera will not produce what you perceive in real life.
2. As with any form of art, I believe it is created to evoke emotion

Take, for example, a photo that a few people have particularly liked².

Now, what did the original, straight-out-of-the-camera image look like?

World of difference right? What I guess many people don’t quite know is that no matter how good you are and how much time you spend changing the settings on your camera, there’s no way to create the first photo straight from the camera. It’s just a simple limitation on the technology. Even with film, there are a lot of things you can’t do unless you do some post-processing in the darkroom.

And even if it could come close, personally I think a photo should convey something. Capturing the moment isn’t merely capturing the image of it, but the emotion and the power of the image. In the above example, bringing out the contrast in the sky emphasizes the gloominess of the photo and of the scene.

Now, when photoshopping someone/something into or out of a photo, that’s where I feel it starts to break down and becomes disigenuous. Even then, it depends on the extent and purpose of it.

Anywho, if you want to see how I got from the second photo to the first, I’ve created a screencast here: http://www.vimeo.com/2130347

I’ve also embedded the video below. (There’s no audio, in case you’re wondering!)

How I Photoshop from benny on Vimeo.

1. Photo site
2. A Day in Dirty Jerz

I’ve had it over at my Tumblr for a while and it’s worked out pretty nicely. With the new Disqus WordPress plugin, it saves a copy of the comment to my WordPress database as well as the Dsiqus servers, so if I ever want to take it down, I won’t have to import anything.

This also gives some people (Jeff, Eric, I’m looking at you) a reason to sign up for a Disqus account (or at least get an OpenID so that their identity will be the same between these two blogs.

Last week, a July beating where the attacker allegedly told his victim, “We don’t like faggots on Barker Street,” was deemed a hate crime by the Staten Island DA’s office… This week, the NAACP entered the fray (the attacker is black) …the president of the NAACP’s Staten Island chapter, Ed Josey, as saying, “We’re not saying that word should be used, but in a fight, [saying it] doesn’t necessarily make it a hate crime.”

And the following is from the Staten Island Advance‘s editorial, agreeing with the above:

People get angry with each other all the time, about all kinds of things. And, especially when alcohol or other such “liberating” substances are involved, they are too often inclined to express that anger in ugly ways.

I find this to be absolutely ridiculous. If the “n-word” was used during a fight, with tempers flared, I highly doubt they would write it off just due to “anger”. This situation makes little sense to me. It just astounds me that people can be so obviously hypocritical.

While those two words don’t carry the same history, I believe that they carry the same severity. I just don’t understand how one can claim this as not a hate crime.

As proof:

All from the comfort of my own bathr… I mean what?

More designs => http://www.taivaanlahja.fi/

About a year and a half ago, my sister and I walked into Watsons because she wanted some lip gloss crap while we were in Taiwan. After she paid, the cashier left the lip gloss on the counter. My sister stood there, a bit confused and stared at the cashier. Likewise, the cashier did the same. For what felt like way too long, the cashier realized that were standing there because we were waiting until she put the lip gloss in a plastic bag.

“We don’t offer plastic bags for free anymore. They now cost [25 cents USD] if you want a bag,” said the cashier.

This was the same throughout much of Taiwan, and I imagine many other places around the world. And I wonder why it isn’t more common. It seems like a perfect solution to be “greener”.

Simply:

• It is better for the consumer, store, environment, THE WORLD because we would all be using fewer bags, fewer plastic. SUPER GREAT FOR THE PLANET
• Better for the store because there’s no need to spend money on buying these plastic bags. I imagine large chains could save millions a year just by doing this.
• Paying for plastic bags I think is enough to make people bring their own bags when grocery shopping. And if priced right, if you just stop into a supermarket and need a plastic bag, it’s not the end of the world

I don’t really see any reason not to start charging for plastic bags. Well, maybe I do. It’d be supremely inconvenient for consumers, but for places like super markets where your purpose of going is to buy groceries, it won’t be hard to bring a couple of canvas bags with you.