Just wondering….

The headline says it all

Dmitri A. Medvedev said in an interview that an America in “essentially a depression” was in no position to lecture other countries on how to conduct their affairs.

[A day earlier] the American treasury secretary, Henry M. Paulson Jr., appealed in Moscow for Russian investment in the United States. The symbolism of the visit resonated here, in that only a decade had passed since the Russian economy was in shambles and the country was desperate for Western aid.

In the interview, Mr. Medvedev was asked about a call by Senator John McCain of Arizona, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, to bar Russia from the Group of 8 because of its record on democracy. Mr. Medvedev, who easily won Russia’s presidential election in March after the Kremlin hobbled the opposition, responded that the question of democracy was irrelevant to the Group of 8 and, besides, the United States had more pressing matters to attend to.

“The Group of 8 exists not because someone likes or dislikes it, but because objectively, they are the biggest world economies and the most serious players from the foreign policy point of view,” Mr. Medvedev said. “Any attempts to put restrictions on anyone in this capacity will damage the entire world order.”

He added, “I am sure that any administration of the United States of America, if it wishes to succeed, among other things, in overcoming essentially a depression that exists in the American economic market, must conduct a pragmatic policy inside the country and abroad.”

Mr. Medvedev said world leaders should realize that the credit crunch and a gathering global recession signaled that the worldwide economic architecture needed to be overhauled. He did not specify how this should be done, but indicated it should entail a reduction in the influence of the United States.

“It has to be improved, it has to be more up-to-date, better protected from risks, and it must not suffer from national egoism, financial and economic egoism, but must be more fair toward other countries; this is absolutely evident,” he said. “This system cannot be oriented toward only one country and only one currency.”

So here we are. Euro is at $1.57. In 2000, it was less than a dollar. Nitentdo is shipping the Wii Fit first to Europe because of their stronger currency.
The Canadian dollar is stronger than the U.S. dollar $1 Canadian = $1.02 USD - something that has never happened in my lifetime.

And now the U.S. is begging for Russian investment. Thank you Mr. Bush-Cheney-Rove

How could I ever think that the Republicans don’t know how to run the government?

An open letter to the people who want to burn gas wantonly:

Do you complain about how you can’t buy the refrigerator you want because of those EnergyStar ratings? Do you feel like you have to setting for a smaller refrigerator? A refrigerator that doesn’t keep your meat and milk as safe?

Why not? Refrigerator manufacturers have been repeatedly forced to increase their energy efficiency. Yet no one seems to miss those sweet 1950’s turbo iceboxes of yesteryear.

All CAFE is is EnergyStar for cars. Just like with refrigerators — the good manufacturers will rise to the challenge and the rest will die.

Detroit had their warning in the late 70’s I lived in Michigan then. 25% unemployment in Flint, MI. No one would take checks. Foreclosures. Crime. A local Great Depression.

Honda, a motorcycle manufacturer, came out with the Honda Civic. My family brought one and drove it south to visit my grandparents. (If you can imagine 5 people in a car the size of a Honda Fit - my yongest sister was on my mom’s lap!)

My grandpa worked as a draftsman for 30 some years at Chrysler. My grandpa said (and this is in the 70’s), “This is the future - Detroit should be building these cars. They are dying and they just don’t know it yet”.

CAFE won’t kill Detroit. CAFE will shake up Detroit and challenge them to improve their product.

Expanding on my comment over here:

This is the reason why contrary to years past - the airlines may be very open to the idea of running the HSR system as a substitute for running the competing planes. At the plane ticket prices they will need to charge + the airport delays driving LA-SF is nearly competitive with flying LAX-SFO.

For medium/short-range “flights” airlines will have the choice of running the trains or relinquishing big portions of their revenue. The airlines will face mounting issues jsut with fuel cost. Keep in mind that aviation fuel by international convention is not taxed. As the realities of Global Warming kick in - this will have to change. Aviation fuel will have to be taxed in proportion to its contribution to Global Warming.

I suspect that passenger travel is going to follow a modal separation model that we see with freight. In freight, short/medium-haul is dominated by trucks. Trucks’ ability to pick-up/deliver closer to the source/destination dominates over the fuel costs. In long-haul/bulk trains have the cost advantage because fuel cost start to dominate.

With passengers, trains/cars should dominate because both have the ability to pick-up/deliver their cargo (passengers) closer to the original source/destination. (City centers or people’s houses).

This leads to an interesting stock picking question: is there an airline/railroad out there that is looking to become an integrated transportation company (i.e. airline + rail + truck)? Considering the difference in the various cultures I suspect that this company will emerge but will be formed from the ground up with the exception of the railroad piece. I make the exception on the railroad people because of the interesting scheduling requirements that come from not being able to reorder trains (limited ability to pass!). But the railroading knowledge could come from the shortlines not the Class Is. Short line railroads have had to think innovative and in customer service intensive ways that the Class I’s have traditionally ignored. Norfolk Southern may be an exception to this.

Quite simply BART-to-SFO has major fatal, permanent flaws:

1. route time is not competitive. During the early morning rush taking a Baby Bullet train from points south of Millbrae to 4th and King with a transfer to Muni is faster. I did this for a year before Baby Bullet service started. Also there are express buses that take Caltrain riders to places like Fort Mason. Caltrain-to-Muni is more of a timed transfer. Caltrain-to-BART does not offer a timed connection and there is a lot of sitting around waiting.
2. Transferring to BART is more expensive. Caltrain-Muni combination offers monthly pass discount. BART has no monthly pass.
3. Getting to the airport is now much harder than before BART.

To expand on the last point on the difficulty of getting to SFO now. Lets compare the before and after picture:

Before BART:

1. Get off Caltrain at Millbrae
2. Get on (free) bus waiting for each Caltrain. The bus waited for you to shlep your luggage into the bus.
3. Passengers were dropped directly off at their airline terminal.
4. Unload bus.

Passengers did not have to go up and down at all with luggage and screaming kids.

Compare that to now:

1. Get off Caltrain at Millbrae.
2. Drag luggage (and kids!) to elevator #1.
3. Wait for elevator #1.
4. Load luggage into the elevator #1. (”Stop pushing the buttons!”)
5. Unload elevator #1
6. Buy BART ticket. (Hassle with change and bills)
7. Drag luggage through BART gate #1.
8. Drag luggage to elevator #2.
9. Wait for elevator #2.
10. Load luggage into the elevator #2. (”I said, ‘Stop pushing the buttons’, Rose!”)
11. Unload elevator #2
12. Drag luggage to BART train #1.
13. Wait for doors.
14. Drag luggage into BART train #1.
15. Unload luggage from BART train #1 at San Bruno.
16. Drag luggage to BART train #2. (less than a minute to do this with kids..go,go,go!) (damn missed it!)
17. (wait 15 min for next train)
18. Wait for doors.
19. Drag luggage into BART train #2.
20. Unload luggage from BART train #2 (at SFO) ( “Are we there yet!”)
21. Drag luggage through BART gate #2.
22. Drag luggage to elevator #3.
23. Wait for elevator #3.
24. Load luggage into the elevator #3. (”I said, ‘Stop pushing the buttons’!”)
25. Unload elevator #3 (”Honey, are you wearing deodorant?”)
26. Drag luggage to SFO people mover (Do we have the Xmas spirit yet?)
27. Wait for doors.
28. Drag luggage into SFO people mover.
29. Unload luggage from SFO people mover.
30. Drag luggage to elevator #4.
31. Wait for elevator #4.
32. Load luggage into the elevator #4. (”I said, ‘Stop pushing the buttons’!”)
33. Unload elevator #4

Update: This is what “stupid” looks like on a map:

View Larger Map

Be sure to thank Quentin Kopp and Mike Nevin the people responsible for the mess.

Any questions?

Interesting post from Paul Graham about the message and measure of success that different cities send.

This is my comment:

To the inverse question is also very interesting.- Specifically, what if a city *does not* send a message? To me that is the same as a company that can’t get its marketing message and corporate culture right. The city, like the company, flounders and “fails”. I used to live near Detroit. That city never recovered from the 1968 race riots. It could never re-discover its message of success.

If a city as a culture (not just a political entity) does not value something, then it provides no guidance to the immigrant (”new hire”). The resources to be successful are not visible nor readily available.

In SV, I would say the message is not “power” but action. Specifically, “Great idea. Have you built it yet?” This is why Cambridge as an “idea” center will not overtake SV. SV is about doing - and more importantly accepting failure as a step toward success.

For this reason, I do think that Silicon Valley must be the place to be in software — because software is the ultimate DIY tool.

Lightspeed venture partners comments that 11-20% of electronic gear is returned.

The breakdown:

Sony’s solution? Make the product easier? Find out how to make the product better? Nope! Make the product harder to return!

My mom is a perfect example of a customer who finds many things electronic too confusing. Rather than do the right thing of asking customers for feedback, Sony takes the easy way out and screws the soon-to-be-former customers.

But it seems like Sony is the exception. In the original article, the other companies discussed have a much more enlightened approach.

1 earthquake + 28 major aftershocks! (as of Tue May 13 2:00:03 UTC 2008)
1 earthquake + 23 major aftershocks! (as of May 12, 2008 at 20:30 UTC)

Munich, Germany just canceled their Transrapid Maglev airport-to-city-center project. This 37-km (22.2 mi) project was to use the same technology as mebelihotel furnishing in BulgariaShanghai’s maglev train. Like the Shanghai maglev train, the Munich project was to have a top speed over 500 kph (360 mph).

It was canceled because the price had doubled from 1.85 billion euros to 3.4 billion euros. 3.4 billion euros is about $5.1 billion.

As point of comparison, the 21 mile BART-to-San-Jose boondoogle is about $4.7+ billion. BART trains rattle and shake at about 70 mph. (The project is really 21 miles because 5 miles are in Alameda County to get to the Alameda/Santa Clara border).

Which leaves me wondering.. WTF are we doing with extending BART to anywhere!??

Marc Andressen was praising dual-class stock structures in light of the Microsoft-Yahoo food fight. Rather than a dual class structure that is explicitly assigned to a certain stock certificate, I prefer AFLAC’s variation.

AFLAC has an interesting variation on this. They have a dual class structure but it is based on how long the stock has been owned in your name. If you have held the a share for 4 years in your name (i.e. not your stock broker’s name like is usually the case) then that share has 10x the vote as a share that has been held for less than that time. Stock plan document (item 18 on page 12)

This is the perfect poison pill defense. A “short term” speculator would have to hold the shares for 4 years in order to have a chance at a hostile takeover. A shareholder who has held the shares for 4 years clearly is invested in the company as a company not just a speculation vehicle.

At the same time this is extremely democratic, anyone could get the class B status by simply being a buy-and-hold investor.

Yahoo website performance tips