Super Jellyfish

I’ve been doing research on CleanTech lately and read Earth: The Sequel. If you are a newbie to this area like me, I think it is actually quite a good read.

I have been contemplating going into green tech, and given all the media buzz and hype around the topic, wanted to see what the hell was going on and determine whether or not it is just hype and BS, or if there is actually something interesting going on.

Well, I do think there is something interesting happening, but I don’t know if I believe that a lot of the exciting new venture-backed cleantech companies are going to make any money. A lot of these companies need significant amounts of capital just to prove out their technology and unfortunately they will NOT be signing up customers until they have a product to sell. And even though a lot of these technologies are cool and interesting, they are just not cost competitive as compared to “dirty” sources such as coal and oil.

Actually, it makes me recall something Vinod Khosla said at a talk I attended. Basically, with energy you have three tradeoffs - cost, reliability, clean. His view is you can have 2 out of the 3, but not all 3. I think that observation is just spot on.

I feel as though a lot of the things discussed in the book will only work once there is a carbon cap trading system in place. And yes, that is likely, I guess, but I don’t know if you can assume that. I think I have those sorts of feelings with a lot of non-fiction books. Especially if they are written more by laypeople versus PhDs or researchers. One of the authors, Fred Krupp, is the president of the Environmental Defense Fund. So yes, he does have some biases and asumptions. I think he spent a lot of time talking to Kleiner Perkins about what’s going on, since a lot of the companies he describes are Kleiner portfolio companies.

Some of the areas he discusses in the book are:

• Solar power including solar voltaics and solar thermal
• Power from the ocean and center of the earth
• Biodiesel players including algae and ethanol energy sources
• Energy efficiency

For more information, check out Amazon’s page on Earth:The Sequel

Some recent additions to my Amazon reading list. These are things that I sort of want to buy/read but feel like I need to save money or something before I do.

1. The Bootstrapper’s Bible: How to Start and Build a Business With a Great Idea and (Almost) No Money by Seth Godin
I’m interested in reading this because I’m contemplating starting my own business and I think it would be great to bootstrap it, or fund it through customer sales versus raising equity from external sources.

2. The Art of the Start by Guy Kawasaki
I sort of find his blog annoying sometimes, but, whatever, he has written a lot of interesting things about starting a business and even created one with very little money and sold it.

3. The Winner-Take-All Society: Why the Few at the Top Get So Much More Than the Rest of Us by Robert Frank and Philip Cook
I am really interested in content type businesses and marketplaces, and I’ve found that certain markets are totally winner take all. For example, auction sites like ebay or classifieds like Craig’s List are sort of winner take all markets. It is more beneficial to users on both sides of the platform if everyone goes to one place.

4. The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Black swans are not supposed to exist. So when you see one, you think, impossible. Totally rare, unlikely. Unfortunately, in today’s world black swans happen more often than you think. The events of September 11th, the bailout of Fannie Mae, how should we think about seeingly rare events? He takes a psychological approach, and I’d really like to get through this book - someday! I picked the audio version because it is great for long car rides and or lazing around and learning at the same time.

5. Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us) by Tom Vanderbilt
I was just in LA and experienced horrible traffic. It is so weird how places are only 20 miles or so apart, so not actually geographically distant. BUT, it will still take an hour to get anyplace. I think our existing modes of traffic are totally due for an overhaul and I’m interested in reading this book to figure out the psychology of our driving patterns.

6. The Cult of the Amateur by Andrew Keen
The author discusses the rise of “non-professional” content, like user-generated content and how it’s hurting our society. I am not sure if I agree with him, but given cheaper and cheaper methods for creating and distributing content, I think this topic is totallly worth thinking about.

7. In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan
I feel like this would be a useful book to read since health and diet are very important. The author goes through our industrialized diets and assesses the lack of nourishment.

8. The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger by Marc Levinson
This book discusses how a standardized container ship resulted in the flattening of the world. I think it makes sense. If you create standards and make it easy to ship stuff, no matter WHAT it is, then transport should become a lot more efficient. I think it would be interesting to learn about how this all came about.

So what is the best way to learn Spanish? I searched around on the web and found this guy who learned French in 10 months. That’s pretty good!

To summarize, these are the steps that he took:

1. Pick up simple novel in Spanish and try to read
2. Review grammar text - skim
3. Study vocabulary with flash cards
4. Start doing grammar exercises
5. Listen to Spanish audio courses - repeatedly
6. Obtain Spanish version of U.S. sitcoms (e.g. Friends, etc.)
7. Watch in Spanish with English subtitles
8. Watch without subtitles
9. Find conversation partners

All the conveniences from the states that he utilized aren’t here though. I can’t order from Netflix to get films or use meetup to find other people learning. Although I guess I really don’t need meetup, since everyone here speaks Spanish anyway!

So I guess I need to find a bookstore so I can find a Spanish edition of Harry Potter. I’ve always wanted to read the series anyway, maybe this will be a good way to read it and learn at the same time. I also found a children’s book using flash in Spanish on the web, too. Aaah, pre-school, perfect for me!

Last night, a Spanish-dubbed version of the Titanic was playing on TV. I tried to watch it — it was the part where the ship starts sinking, but unfortunately, I couldn’t understand anything.

Sigh, learning a language is a slow, arduous process! I have to stay diligent! Basically, everything that I read says that it’s better to spend 20 minutes a day every day versus 5 hours on a single day. It’s too bad, since I get these bursts of energy and want to study and other times, I just don’t feel like it.

Hmm, I also want to learn Chinese. How will I learn both Spanish and Chinese? Gosh, I really admire people who can speak multiple languages!!

by Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on”;

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And - which is more - you’ll be a Man my son!

Another incisive article from Malcolm Gladwell. This time, he tackles the question of admission to elite universities:

Why are elite universities in the U.S. concerned with more than academic ability, while top schools in the rest of the world often consider solely test scores in admissions?

On what Harvard is looking for:

“It is a wonderful thing, of course, for a school to turn out lots of relatively happy and successful graduates. But Harvard didn’t want lots of relatively happy and successful graduates. It wanted superstars, and Bender and his colleagues recognized that if this is your goal a best-students model isn’t enough.”

Why are former athletes so highly desired in business?

“One of these characteristics can be thought of as drive—a strong desire to succeed and unswerving determination to reach a goal, whether it be winning the next game or closing a sale. Similarly, athletes tend to be more energetic than the average person, which translates into an ability to work hard over long periods of time—to meet, for example, the workload demands placed on young people by an investment bank in the throes of analyzing a transaction. In addition, athletes are more likely than others to be highly competitive, gregarious and confident of their ability to work well in groups (on teams). “

(Bowen and Shulman)

“It was his job to protect his client from the attentions of the socially undesirable… This is, in no small part, what Ivy League admissions directors do. They are in the luxury-brand-management business, and “The Chosen,” [a new book by Jerome Karabel] in the end, is a testament to just how well the brand managers in Cambridge, New Haven, and Princeton have done their job in the past seventy-five years.”

Moreover, universities focus on rewarding customer loyalty:

“In the 1985-92 period, for instance, Harvard admitted children of alumni at a rate more than twice that of non-athlete, non-legacy applicants, despite the fact that, on virtually every one of the school’s magical ratings scales, legacies significantly lagged behind their peers.”

Fascinating!

Reading the commencement address Thomas Friedman gave at Williams College just made me cry. I know, I am such a softie, but I just couldn’t help it!

You know when you read something and there’s a story about someone kind and generous, and you get this foreboding feeling, like, oh no, something happened to that person. Well, I had that moment while I was reading his commencement address and even though I was expecting it, it still made me cry!

In any case, here are some words from Mark Twain that carry the heart of his speech:

“Always work like you don’t need the money. Always fall in love like you’ve never been hurt. Always dance like nobody is watching. And always — always — live like it’s heaven on earth.”

Interesting article on valedictorians in a recent issue of the New Yorker:

“”Few of the valedictorians seem destined for intellectual eminence or for creative work outside of familiar career paths… Dedicated to the well-rounded ideal– to be a valedictorian, after all, you must excel in classes that don’t interest you or are poorly taught– the valedictorians had ‘used their strong work ethic to pursue multiple academic and extracurricular interest. None was obsessed with a single talent area to which he or she subordinated school and social involvement.

This marks a difference, Arnold said, from what we know about many eminent achievers, who tend to evince an early passion for a particular field…

Valedictorians, by contrast, conformed to the expectations of school and carefully chose careers that were likely to be socially and financially secure: “As a rule, valedictorians relegated their early interests to hobbies, second majors, or regretted dead ends. The serious athletes among the valedictorians never pursued sports occupations. Most of the high school musicians hung up their instruments during college.”

Are valedictorians doomed to a life of comfortable mediocrity??

I am very excited about the imminent arrival of the full archives of The New Yorker in DVD form! I can’t wait!

However, the question remains, why has the New Yorker chosen to offer its wealth of articles in an electronic (and potentially piratable) format? And if the New Yorker is wiling to do it, why won’t authors of books today offer their books in DVD format?

The most obvious reason I can think of is that the New Yorker archives are currently not monetized. Old issues sit in stacks in the living rooms and dens of people’s homes, but perhaps the New Yorker has not had much success in selling old articles; or in making those articles accessible to the general public.

(Yes, you may have found an exhilarating article in a June 1997 article in the New Yorker, but can you remember which issue you found the article in? Can you remember who wrote the article? Can you even find it again?)

So by offering up the archives on DVD, The New Yorker can accomplish two goals: first, and foremost, the publication can monetize an extremely valuable asset which currently (probably) does not produce that much revenue and secondly, the New Yorker can make available its rich history of content to people everywhere (much more accessible) and perhaps attract new readers to a subscription to the New Yorker.

If you think about it, the incremental cost to the New Yorker to sell these DVD’s is almost zero. All the money and effort poured into creating these articles has been spent. The sweat, the tears, the editing, the late nights, all DONE.

This kind of goes back to the (by-now tired) concept of the Long Tail — it may cost a great deal to create content today (think of multi-million dollar films) but the cost to show another person the film once the film is created is peanuts relative to the cost of creation. And so it’s possible and very profitable to generate more and more sales from existing content.

So why won’t authors of books offer their titles in the same manner?

Maybe the books themselves are too small (once digitized) and don’t require a full DVD. This results in further consequences, since the size being small, not dissimilar in size to an MP3, could make the content more susceptible to pirating and trading online. Thus, the format cries out for restrictive “digital rights management” (so that you can only read the book once on your computer and the moment your computer dies or is upgraded, you lose the book that you spent $20 to buy, since the book is only as good as your existing machine.)

In addition, authors have an obvious alternative to offering their wares on DVD or in electronic format, just sell the books in physical form. Unlike the New Yorker, authors can continue to sell their books in physical bookstores as long as the publishers are willing to print the books. The books will sell even if they are no longer in print — an active and enthusiastic market for used books exists on Amazon.com, for example.

The New Yorker, however, does not currently sell or make back-issues available in physical form at a bookstore. There is thus a limited revenue opportunity and distribution mechanism for back issues and old articles. (And not only that, since there are so many articles, there exists the problem of a reader even locating the article and recognizing that yes the article exists and that they may want to purchase the article.)

The opportunities and risks for a book writer and a magazine such as the New Yorker are completely different.

Thus, unfortunately, I doubt we will see more books/written content made available in DVD format. Too bad!

80 Years of The New Yorker to Be Offered in Disc Form [NYT]

I’m definitely going to buy this!! Out this fall.. if you feel like buying me a belated birthday present, this would be great!

The only problem is — will it be annoying to read it on-screen? And according to the article, the “magazine plans to issue annual updates to the disc collection” — does that mean I have to buy the whole thing again every year? Or will they provide just a disc with the latest year?

Come on — let’s offer some other books/publications in this manner! I would totally buy them!

The Story of the Unveiling of Deep Throat [WPO]

This quote makes me feel sad… did Felt want his identity revealed?

“The Vanity Fair story muddies the issue somewhat. O’Connor notes in the story that Felt told him, “I’m the guy they called Deep Throat,” but the context is lacking. For one thing, O’Connor played a dual role: He was providing the Felt family with legal advice while also writing a magazine story, which meant that Felt’s revelation may have been information provided under attorney-client privilege and therefore not subject to unilateral disclosure.

What’s more, as O’Connor makes clear in his story, the Felt family was seeking to profit from Felt’s secret identity and therefore had an incentive to pressure a clearly conflicted Felt into going public.”