It's been a happy weekend. Well, at least if you discount the fact that some kid said i looked old (ouch)! Did it rain at all? No I don't think it did right? Except perhaps a small drizzle when I was at church. But if didn't see it, it didn't rain, so there.... :P
Almost 8 months now. Longer than I could imagine getting through at that time. Well, sun's up and its time to party. Or so I hope!
從小老師也加倍認真
來教導我步過紅綠燈
右與左必須清楚看真
那管一次做錯
也都可摧這生
何解我戀愛雙倍殘忍
從來是快樂過便不會僥倖
動作小簡單偏偏最深
我怎可以做個
最優秀路上行人
明明綠燈轉眼變成紅燈
假使相當勇敢怎可挽回自身
若要衝損傷怎可以不留痕
來又去要找的際遇未接近
明明綠燈轉眼變成紅燈
抬頭前望去對面馬路如此吸引
逐秒等心急總加倍的難行
難道我要必先壯烈地犧牲去換吻
如夜了我衣衫太薄便歸家靠路燈
誰想到走錯死裏逃生
才明白較沒有夢想更不幸
若誕生不好好開過心
也不可以被愛我不過是像泥塵
Monday, April 21, 2008
Sunday, April 20, 2008
Our sturdy golden bear
Our sturdy golden bear
Is watching from the skies
Looks down upon our colors fair
And guards us from his lair...
Our banner gold and blue
The symbol on it too
Means FIGHT for California
For California through and through!
I watched "The Bucket List" last night. Yeah I know its an old show from 2007 and its not really talked about much in the press, but its also a really moving show and I enjoyed it a lot. Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman, don't pray pray ok!
What did I learn from this movie? The Egyptians believe that they will ask you 2 questions at the pearly gates of heaven.
1) Have you had joy in your life?
2) Have you brought joy to someone else's life?
Well, I believe we should live our life's with this mantra too. Life is nothing without joy. I love the American way of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Especially the third item, not many countries I know out there which strive for this.
Here in Singapore, we say happiness, prosperity and progress for our nation. But really I think many of us have forgotten about happiness. Just take a look at the sullen faces on the mrt (Both in the morning and in the evening). And those kids who are still happy, smiling and making a lot of noise, everybody just stares at them as if they should just shut up. I hope they don't lose their joy when they grow up.
Perhaps Singapore is too crowded, I don't know. Right here in Marine Parade its still ok, not too bad. But maybe after all the condos get en-bloc and replaced by 50 storey high behemoths (like HK) then we got a serious problem. Right now, as long as the crowds are not in my back yard its ok with me. East coast park isn't too crowded either. Okay, except for the mcdonalds area, but if you have wheels, it ain't gonna take you long to get out of there to some quieter parts! Especially that stretch that connects to changi coastal road, boy thats really lovely man! But it takes quite a while to get there, not everyone would be able to make it there and back.
What does it take to look good? Ya, I know today's blog is starting to get really random. Makes it more interesting I guess! I need to get more workout, that's for sure. My tummy is getting bigger and bigger. Hey this used to be the M1 who can eat all he wants and not train to pass IPPT! Guess what? I failed last november, by 10 seconds! Well my window closes in august but definitely IPPT is not something that i fail, otherwise its an indication that there's something really wrong with my fitness.
My daily lunch diet of disgustingly unhealthy and oily local hawker center food is not suitable if I cant keep myself in good shape. Even the noodles soup which the ladies like to eat, guess what, has more salt in it than recommended for daily consumption! That's why a lot of coworkers and friends are starting to get high cholestorol and high blood pressure by the age of 35. Does that mean we are all doomed? No. Our forefathers ate such food and still remained healthy. Why? Cos they worked out, in the docks, in the fields, tapping rubber trees etc. So I gotta work out too if I want to enjoy the unhealthy hawker food.
Yah that being said, I woke up too late to go rollerblading this morning though the weather was perfect! Shucks, I should slap myself heheh.....
Well, I'm late, got to convince kids to go to Cal. Go Bears! (That's why we started off with the fight song :P)
Is watching from the skies
Looks down upon our colors fair
And guards us from his lair...
Our banner gold and blue
The symbol on it too
Means FIGHT for California
For California through and through!
I watched "The Bucket List" last night. Yeah I know its an old show from 2007 and its not really talked about much in the press, but its also a really moving show and I enjoyed it a lot. Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman, don't pray pray ok!
What did I learn from this movie? The Egyptians believe that they will ask you 2 questions at the pearly gates of heaven.
1) Have you had joy in your life?
2) Have you brought joy to someone else's life?
Well, I believe we should live our life's with this mantra too. Life is nothing without joy. I love the American way of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Especially the third item, not many countries I know out there which strive for this.
Here in Singapore, we say happiness, prosperity and progress for our nation. But really I think many of us have forgotten about happiness. Just take a look at the sullen faces on the mrt (Both in the morning and in the evening). And those kids who are still happy, smiling and making a lot of noise, everybody just stares at them as if they should just shut up. I hope they don't lose their joy when they grow up.
Perhaps Singapore is too crowded, I don't know. Right here in Marine Parade its still ok, not too bad. But maybe after all the condos get en-bloc and replaced by 50 storey high behemoths (like HK) then we got a serious problem. Right now, as long as the crowds are not in my back yard its ok with me. East coast park isn't too crowded either. Okay, except for the mcdonalds area, but if you have wheels, it ain't gonna take you long to get out of there to some quieter parts! Especially that stretch that connects to changi coastal road, boy thats really lovely man! But it takes quite a while to get there, not everyone would be able to make it there and back.
What does it take to look good? Ya, I know today's blog is starting to get really random. Makes it more interesting I guess! I need to get more workout, that's for sure. My tummy is getting bigger and bigger. Hey this used to be the M1 who can eat all he wants and not train to pass IPPT! Guess what? I failed last november, by 10 seconds! Well my window closes in august but definitely IPPT is not something that i fail, otherwise its an indication that there's something really wrong with my fitness.
My daily lunch diet of disgustingly unhealthy and oily local hawker center food is not suitable if I cant keep myself in good shape. Even the noodles soup which the ladies like to eat, guess what, has more salt in it than recommended for daily consumption! That's why a lot of coworkers and friends are starting to get high cholestorol and high blood pressure by the age of 35. Does that mean we are all doomed? No. Our forefathers ate such food and still remained healthy. Why? Cos they worked out, in the docks, in the fields, tapping rubber trees etc. So I gotta work out too if I want to enjoy the unhealthy hawker food.
Yah that being said, I woke up too late to go rollerblading this morning though the weather was perfect! Shucks, I should slap myself heheh.....
Well, I'm late, got to convince kids to go to Cal. Go Bears! (That's why we started off with the fight song :P)
Saturday, April 19, 2008
Silver: interesting
Nanotechnology
Silver tongues
Apr 17th 2008 | NEW YORK
From The Economist print edition
Regulators are looking more closely at nanotechnology claims
ANCIENT Phoenicians stored their drinking water in silver vessels, but not for aesthetic reasons. They discovered that by doing so they remained healthier. The reason for that is now understood: silver has antimicrobial properties.
In the 21st century people have realised that if you fortify Phoenician wisdom with a dash of nanotechnology, silver can be made into a far more potent bactericide. Companies have quickly seized on this idea to produce a wide variety of products, from clothes to soap and even chopsticks, containing silver nanoparticles. The claim is that they destroy germs.
But silver can also accumulate in the environment and, at certain levels, prove toxic. Nor is the general safety of nanoparticles fully understood, not least because they can react in novel ways. Some scientists think more research is needed and perhaps more regulation too. A move in that direction now seems to be under way.
Silver's natural germ-killing ability stems from its extremely slow release of silver ions (electrically charged atoms, or groups of atoms). When made into particles only a few nanometres big—a nanometre is a billionth of a metre—they shed a lot more ions and so become more potent.
America's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is worried about a large number of products claiming antimicrobial abilities. One is “Silver Wash”, a washing machine made by Samsung, which claims to employ nanotechnology to release hundreds of billions of silver ions during a wash to sanitise fabrics.
The EPA has ruled that ion-generating devices that claim to kill germs must be registered as a pesticide and tested to show they pose no unreasonable risk. The EPA says its intention is to regulate ion-generating devices rather than nanotechnology itself. But it is hard to draw a distinction. Andrew Maynard, chief science adviser for the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies at the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars in Washington, DC, says functionality is an important part of the definition. Turning silver into tiny particles that behave in new ways (for example, by shedding more ions) and putting those particles into new places (such as fabrics) qualifies—or so he thinks.
One consequence of dividing a substance into nanoparticles is that the surface area of the material greatly expands. “Nanosilver is so tiny it can go right to the surface of an organism and essentially shoot ions into the organism,” says Sam Luoma, a research scientist at the John Muir Institute of the Environment at the University of California, Davis. Although this makes silver nanoparticles an extremely effective antimicrobial agent, it also raises concerns about humans' ability to withstand relatively high exposures.
Despite the unknowns, Dr Luoma and others believe there is enormous potential for good from nanosilver. It can, for example, be used in small amounts to coat medical catheters to reduce the possibility of infection without causing environmental worries. “We need to separate out the truly beneficial uses,” he adds.
The EPA will not look at benefit or necessity, but is determined to make its registration stick. It has fined one company more than $200,000 for making unsubstantiated claims about unregistered nanosilver-coated computer mice and keyboards. Firms making claims about nanotechnology need to watch out.
Silver tongues
Apr 17th 2008 | NEW YORK
From The Economist print edition
Regulators are looking more closely at nanotechnology claims
ANCIENT Phoenicians stored their drinking water in silver vessels, but not for aesthetic reasons. They discovered that by doing so they remained healthier. The reason for that is now understood: silver has antimicrobial properties.
In the 21st century people have realised that if you fortify Phoenician wisdom with a dash of nanotechnology, silver can be made into a far more potent bactericide. Companies have quickly seized on this idea to produce a wide variety of products, from clothes to soap and even chopsticks, containing silver nanoparticles. The claim is that they destroy germs.
But silver can also accumulate in the environment and, at certain levels, prove toxic. Nor is the general safety of nanoparticles fully understood, not least because they can react in novel ways. Some scientists think more research is needed and perhaps more regulation too. A move in that direction now seems to be under way.
Silver's natural germ-killing ability stems from its extremely slow release of silver ions (electrically charged atoms, or groups of atoms). When made into particles only a few nanometres big—a nanometre is a billionth of a metre—they shed a lot more ions and so become more potent.
America's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is worried about a large number of products claiming antimicrobial abilities. One is “Silver Wash”, a washing machine made by Samsung, which claims to employ nanotechnology to release hundreds of billions of silver ions during a wash to sanitise fabrics.
The EPA has ruled that ion-generating devices that claim to kill germs must be registered as a pesticide and tested to show they pose no unreasonable risk. The EPA says its intention is to regulate ion-generating devices rather than nanotechnology itself. But it is hard to draw a distinction. Andrew Maynard, chief science adviser for the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies at the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars in Washington, DC, says functionality is an important part of the definition. Turning silver into tiny particles that behave in new ways (for example, by shedding more ions) and putting those particles into new places (such as fabrics) qualifies—or so he thinks.
One consequence of dividing a substance into nanoparticles is that the surface area of the material greatly expands. “Nanosilver is so tiny it can go right to the surface of an organism and essentially shoot ions into the organism,” says Sam Luoma, a research scientist at the John Muir Institute of the Environment at the University of California, Davis. Although this makes silver nanoparticles an extremely effective antimicrobial agent, it also raises concerns about humans' ability to withstand relatively high exposures.
Despite the unknowns, Dr Luoma and others believe there is enormous potential for good from nanosilver. It can, for example, be used in small amounts to coat medical catheters to reduce the possibility of infection without causing environmental worries. “We need to separate out the truly beneficial uses,” he adds.
The EPA will not look at benefit or necessity, but is determined to make its registration stick. It has fined one company more than $200,000 for making unsubstantiated claims about unregistered nanosilver-coated computer mice and keyboards. Firms making claims about nanotechnology need to watch out.
Friday, April 18, 2008
Clinton's done
DECLARATIONS
By PEGGY NOONAN
While McCain Watches
April 18, 2008
On Tuesday at Washington's Convention Center, Hillary Clinton made the best speech of her campaign. She told the American Society of Newspaper Editors how she conceives "the power and promise of the presidency." She asserted that President Bush had been "unready" for the office, did not understand its "constitutional character," exhibited in his decisions an "ideological disdain." She said she hopes to "restore balance and purpose" to the presidency, and detailed specific actions she would take immediately on entering the White House.
It was an important speech, and someone, probably many someones, worked hard on it. It was highly partisan, even polar, but it was a more thoughtful critique of the administration, more densely woven and less bromidic, than she has offered in the past, and she used a higher vocabulary. So eager was she to be heard she actually noted at one point that what she'd just said was not "a soundbite."
And here's the thing. It didn't matter. Nobody noticed. A room full of journalists didn't notice this was something new and interesting. And they didn't notice because nobody is listening anymore.
Mrs. Clinton is transmitting, but people aren't receiving. She has been branded, tagged. She's been absorbed, understood and categorized. People have decided what they think, and it's not good.
It took George W. Bush five years to get to that point. It took her five intense months. Political historians will say her campaign sank with the mad Bosnia lie, but Bosnia broke through only because it expressed, crystallized, what people had already begun to think: too much mendacity there, too much manipulation.
Timing is everything. "Too late to get serious," I wrote in my notes. For before this, Mrs. Clinton's campaign was all dreary recitation of talking points, rote applause lines followed by rote applause.
The next day the Washington Post had its latest numbers. A "majority of voters now view her as dishonest," it said, bluntly. Six in 10 said she was "not honest or trustworthy." Which itself doesn't tell us, really, anything new, but concretizes, like the Bosnia story, what is already known.
This is what I think will happen. At some future point Mrs. Clinton will leave, and at a more distant one she will try to come back. But more than one cycle will have to pass before she does. She'll need more than four years to shake off the impression she made in 2008. And this is how you'll know she's making another bid for the presidency. She will wear skirts. Gone will be the pantsuits that made her look like a small blond man with breasts. It's the new me, I wear skirts! Her first impulse is to think cosmetically. A long and weary life in politics has left her thinking this is the way to think.
All of which sounds as if I foresee a Pennsylvania drubbing for her. I do not. I just think that whatever happens in Pennsylvania, the decision has been made, the die cast. Barack Obama's supporters will not be denied. He broke through, gained purchase, held his ground, the one thing Mrs. Clinton could not afford. When I speak to superdelegates, the vibration is there: It is the moment of Obama.
And now his problem emerges. It is two-headed. It is not that he is African-American, or half so, and it is not that he is liberal. Liberalism too, one senses, is having a moment.
It is his youth, his relative untriedness, the fact that he has not suffered, been seasoned, been beat about the head by life and left struggling back, as happens to most adults by a certain time. This is what I hear from older people, who vote in great numbers. They are not hostile to his race, they are skeptical of his inexperience.
The other is elitism, a charge that clearly grates on him and unnerves his wife, who has a great deal that would be attractive in a first lady (intelligence, accomplishment, beauty) but lacks placidity, which is, actually, necessary. All first ladies, first spouses, should be like Denis Thatcher, slightly dazed, mildly inscrutable, utterly supportive. It is the only job in the world where "seems slightly drugged" is a positive job qualification. The key is to know you are not the drama, you do not draw the lightning, you are a background player who yet has deep, unseen power. (The "deep, unseen power" part keeps you serene and energized. The constant possibility of quiet revenge keeps one peppy.)
Sen. Obama seems honestly surprised by the furor his the-poor-cling-to-God-and-guns remarks elicited, and if one considers his background—intense marginalization followed by the establishment's embrace—this is understandable. He was only caught speaking the secret language of America's elite, and what he said was not meant as a putdown. It was an explanation aimed at ameliorating the elites' anger toward and impatience with normal people. It's a way of explaining them, of saying, "You have to remember they're not comfortable and educated like us, they're vulnerable and so we must try to understand them and feel sympathy for and solidarity with them." You could say this at any high-class dinner party in America and not cause a ruffle. But America is not a high-class dinner party.
Mrs. Obama said Tuesday that she is from the South Side of Chicago and a working-class home, and seemed to argue that no one from such humble beginnings could be an elitist. But America is full of people who started low, rose high and internalized what the right people think, which is another way of saying what the elites think. To rise in America is to turn left, unless you are very, very tough or protected by privilege of the financial or familial kind.
Can Mr. Obama survive this? Yes. But it made a bad impression, the kind it's hard to eradicate. Good news for him: the trope that blacks aren't snobs, they're patronized by snobs. Also, he doesn't seem haughty. He seems like a nice man. Also the person exploiting his gaffe is Mrs. Clinton.
* * *
Meanwhile, John McCain makes daily, small, incremental gains. He happily watches the Democrats fight and happily advances his cause. Did you see him on "Hardball" the other night with the college students of Villanova? They were beside themselves at the sight of him. It seems to me it would be a brilliant thing for him to announce he means to be a one-term president, that he means to have a clean, serious, one-term presidency in which he will do things those under pressure of re-election do not and cannot do. This would be received as a refreshment, a way out for the voters in a year they seem to want a way out. For many in the middle it would be a twofer. You get a good man, for only four years, and Mr. Obama gets to grow and deepen. He'll be better older.
The downside? Americans like knowing they can fire a president. It's how they keep them in line. And lame-duckness from day one would not be empowering.
If Mr. McCain went this route, how and when he said it would be everything. As with Mrs. Clinton, timing will be everything.
By PEGGY NOONAN
While McCain Watches
April 18, 2008
On Tuesday at Washington's Convention Center, Hillary Clinton made the best speech of her campaign. She told the American Society of Newspaper Editors how she conceives "the power and promise of the presidency." She asserted that President Bush had been "unready" for the office, did not understand its "constitutional character," exhibited in his decisions an "ideological disdain." She said she hopes to "restore balance and purpose" to the presidency, and detailed specific actions she would take immediately on entering the White House.
It was an important speech, and someone, probably many someones, worked hard on it. It was highly partisan, even polar, but it was a more thoughtful critique of the administration, more densely woven and less bromidic, than she has offered in the past, and she used a higher vocabulary. So eager was she to be heard she actually noted at one point that what she'd just said was not "a soundbite."
And here's the thing. It didn't matter. Nobody noticed. A room full of journalists didn't notice this was something new and interesting. And they didn't notice because nobody is listening anymore.
Mrs. Clinton is transmitting, but people aren't receiving. She has been branded, tagged. She's been absorbed, understood and categorized. People have decided what they think, and it's not good.
It took George W. Bush five years to get to that point. It took her five intense months. Political historians will say her campaign sank with the mad Bosnia lie, but Bosnia broke through only because it expressed, crystallized, what people had already begun to think: too much mendacity there, too much manipulation.
Timing is everything. "Too late to get serious," I wrote in my notes. For before this, Mrs. Clinton's campaign was all dreary recitation of talking points, rote applause lines followed by rote applause.
The next day the Washington Post had its latest numbers. A "majority of voters now view her as dishonest," it said, bluntly. Six in 10 said she was "not honest or trustworthy." Which itself doesn't tell us, really, anything new, but concretizes, like the Bosnia story, what is already known.
This is what I think will happen. At some future point Mrs. Clinton will leave, and at a more distant one she will try to come back. But more than one cycle will have to pass before she does. She'll need more than four years to shake off the impression she made in 2008. And this is how you'll know she's making another bid for the presidency. She will wear skirts. Gone will be the pantsuits that made her look like a small blond man with breasts. It's the new me, I wear skirts! Her first impulse is to think cosmetically. A long and weary life in politics has left her thinking this is the way to think.
All of which sounds as if I foresee a Pennsylvania drubbing for her. I do not. I just think that whatever happens in Pennsylvania, the decision has been made, the die cast. Barack Obama's supporters will not be denied. He broke through, gained purchase, held his ground, the one thing Mrs. Clinton could not afford. When I speak to superdelegates, the vibration is there: It is the moment of Obama.
And now his problem emerges. It is two-headed. It is not that he is African-American, or half so, and it is not that he is liberal. Liberalism too, one senses, is having a moment.
It is his youth, his relative untriedness, the fact that he has not suffered, been seasoned, been beat about the head by life and left struggling back, as happens to most adults by a certain time. This is what I hear from older people, who vote in great numbers. They are not hostile to his race, they are skeptical of his inexperience.
The other is elitism, a charge that clearly grates on him and unnerves his wife, who has a great deal that would be attractive in a first lady (intelligence, accomplishment, beauty) but lacks placidity, which is, actually, necessary. All first ladies, first spouses, should be like Denis Thatcher, slightly dazed, mildly inscrutable, utterly supportive. It is the only job in the world where "seems slightly drugged" is a positive job qualification. The key is to know you are not the drama, you do not draw the lightning, you are a background player who yet has deep, unseen power. (The "deep, unseen power" part keeps you serene and energized. The constant possibility of quiet revenge keeps one peppy.)
Sen. Obama seems honestly surprised by the furor his the-poor-cling-to-God-and-guns remarks elicited, and if one considers his background—intense marginalization followed by the establishment's embrace—this is understandable. He was only caught speaking the secret language of America's elite, and what he said was not meant as a putdown. It was an explanation aimed at ameliorating the elites' anger toward and impatience with normal people. It's a way of explaining them, of saying, "You have to remember they're not comfortable and educated like us, they're vulnerable and so we must try to understand them and feel sympathy for and solidarity with them." You could say this at any high-class dinner party in America and not cause a ruffle. But America is not a high-class dinner party.
Mrs. Obama said Tuesday that she is from the South Side of Chicago and a working-class home, and seemed to argue that no one from such humble beginnings could be an elitist. But America is full of people who started low, rose high and internalized what the right people think, which is another way of saying what the elites think. To rise in America is to turn left, unless you are very, very tough or protected by privilege of the financial or familial kind.
Can Mr. Obama survive this? Yes. But it made a bad impression, the kind it's hard to eradicate. Good news for him: the trope that blacks aren't snobs, they're patronized by snobs. Also, he doesn't seem haughty. He seems like a nice man. Also the person exploiting his gaffe is Mrs. Clinton.
* * *
Meanwhile, John McCain makes daily, small, incremental gains. He happily watches the Democrats fight and happily advances his cause. Did you see him on "Hardball" the other night with the college students of Villanova? They were beside themselves at the sight of him. It seems to me it would be a brilliant thing for him to announce he means to be a one-term president, that he means to have a clean, serious, one-term presidency in which he will do things those under pressure of re-election do not and cannot do. This would be received as a refreshment, a way out for the voters in a year they seem to want a way out. For many in the middle it would be a twofer. You get a good man, for only four years, and Mr. Obama gets to grow and deepen. He'll be better older.
The downside? Americans like knowing they can fire a president. It's how they keep them in line. And lame-duckness from day one would not be empowering.
If Mr. McCain went this route, how and when he said it would be everything. As with Mrs. Clinton, timing will be everything.
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Obama
Tuesday april 15:
Michelle Obama on the Colbert Report
http://www.comedycentral.com/colbertreport/index.jhtml
You gotta see this, its awesome!
Obama for president!
Michelle Obama on the Colbert Report
http://www.comedycentral.com/colbertreport/index.jhtml
You gotta see this, its awesome!
Obama for president!
Saturday, April 12, 2008
Carbon credits: Fraud?
U.N. Effort
To Curtail
Emissions
In Turmoil
By JEFFREY BALL
April 12, 2008
A multibillion-dollar experiment designed to curb global warming is stumbling as regulators question whether the program is doing enough environmental good.
The United Nations is the main global policeman in an effort by wealthy nations to reduce the impact of their own pollution by paying for cleanups in the developing world. The program, known as the Clean Development Mechanism, is one of the most important coordinated efforts to attack global warming.
In recent months, however, U.N. regulators who administer the program have objected to dozens of these developing-world projects, ranging from hydroelectric plants to wind farms, questioning whether the projects would produce a real environmental payoff.
U.N. regulators are also concerned that some independent auditors of these projects, who are responsible for vetting their environmental legitimacy, have been letting project developers push through ventures of questionable environmental value.
The crackdown challenges a plank of the world's campaign against climate change: that polluters can pay someone else to clean up the mess. If the approach were to be discredited, curbing emissions could cost companies and consumers significantly more.
At issue, says Kai-Uwe Barani Schmidt, the U.N. panel's top administrator, is a conflict between "private-sector ambitions and the environmental integrity of the system."
As companies world-wide face government pressure to pollute less, the U.N. program gives them a cheaper alternative to cutting their own emissions. Instead, they can pay for the right to pollute by buying "carbon credits," essentially permission slips to spew carbon dioxide. Sale of the credits is supposed to help fund clean-air projects in China and other developing countries that would otherwise be too costly to build.
Last month, the panel declined to authorize the sale of carbon credits from two wind farms in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Backers of the projects, which have a combined 22 turbines, said their economic success depended on revenue from the sale of carbon credits. The U.N. panel said it wasn't persuaded.
The U.N. has rejected numerous other proposals on similar grounds since last summer. Among them: A Brazilian corn-processing factory, two Indian sugar mills and two Malaysian palm-oil plants. All were designed to install equipment to generate energy from renewable materials like wood scraps, fruit bunches and other waste. That would reduce the need for fossil fuels.
Developing-world projects like these are part of the burgeoning global carbon trade. In total, the global carbon market last year was worth 40.4 billion euros , according to Point Carbon, a Norway-based industry consultant. Of that total, Western companies and governments invested six billion euros last year in credits from projects in the developing world, nearly double the prior year, Point Carbon says.
In 2004 and 2005, as projects began to trickle in, the lightly staffed office of the U.N. Clean Development Mechanism's executive board approved virtually all of them. But as the number of proposed projects soared, the panel hired more staff and late last year tightened standards. In 2007, it rejected 9% of proposed projects, and held up another 21% for further review, according to U.N. figures -- many of which required changes before getting the go-ahead. The U.N. demanded more financial data to prove many projects needed carbon-credit revenue to be feasible.
The U.N. says it isn't suggesting that most of the developing-word projects are illegitimate. Evaluating whether a project would have been built without carbon-credit revenue is a complex judgment call, says the U.N.'s Mr. Schmidt. It represents "one of the biggest challenges" of the current system.
The average developing-world carbon credit -- which grants permission to the buyer to emit a ton of carbon dioxide -- sells on the market for $16 to $24. The U.N. issued credits last year worth roughly $1.2 billion to $1.8 billion.
The carbon market was created by the Kyoto Protocol, a 1997 global treaty underlying environmental rules already in effect for much of the world and now being considered by the U.S. Congress. Most buyers of developing-world credits are in Japan and Europe. U.S. companies aren't buying them in significant numbers, market analysts say.
The U.N. regulators are questioning the actions of two main players in the carbon market: Project developers, who put together projects in order to sell the credits to Western industrial buyers; and the auditing firms that inspect and certify to the U.N. that the projects are environmentally legitimate.
A dozen or so project developers, most based in Europe, dominate the business. Among the largest is EcoSecurities Ltd. of Oxford, England. The U.N. has rejected several of its projects, often contending they would have been financially viable without the revenue from credits.
Bruce Usher, the New York-based chief executive of EcoSecurities, says the company's projects are environmentally legitimate. Last November, largely in response to the U.N. crackdown, EcoSecurities said it was writing off a chunk of the carbon credits it had promised the market it would deliver. Since then, the company's shares, traded on the London Stock Exchange's AIM index, have fallen 67%.
Three auditors dominate the business. All three -- Det Norske Veritas, based in Norway; Tüv Süd AG, based in Germany; and SGS Group, based in Switzerland -- are major European consulting firms for whom the carbon market is a small but growing franchise.
The auditors argue that they're not to blame for the questionable quality of some proposed projects. In a presentation to U.N. officials last fall, the head of Tüv Süd's carbon business told U.N. officials that the quality of projects the auditors are receiving from carbon brokers is "going down," according to the U.N. panel's Mr. Schmidt, who was at the meeting.
In an interview, the Tüv Süd executive, Werner Betzenbichler, declined to discuss his comments in the U.N. meeting. But he confirmed the substance of his presentation.
"There is a high incentive" for companies to put together environmentally questionable carbon-credit projects, "because there is a lot of money that can be earned," he said. "People are getting more inventive, so it's getting harder to detect the black sheep."
Luc Larmuseau, global director of climate-change services for DNV, echoed those thoughts. "We've seen some examples where we've got serious doubt," he says. DNV and the other auditors have prepared a dossier of their rejections and have sent it to U.N. regulators as part of their defense.
The issue came to a head in December, at a meeting between U.N. officials and auditors during a U.N. conference on climate-change policy in Bali, Indonesia. A member of the U.N. board, Christiana Figueres, expressed concern that the system may be open to what she called "collusion" between auditors and project developers to push through environmentally dubious projects.
Ms. Figueres confirms that she used the term in the December meeting, but says she didn't intend to suggest that auditors are purposely recommending that the U.N. approve projects whose legitimacy the auditors doubt. Rather, she says, she was suggesting "a systemic collusion in which the [U.N.] board is being put in a position of having to do an in-depth review of these projects because [the auditors] are not doing it."
Ms. Figueres, a consultant living in Washington, D.C., left the U.N. board in January, when her term representing her native Costa Rica was up.
The U.N.'s Mr. Schmidt confirms that members of the U.N. panel "are aware of the clear and perceived risk of collusion" between auditors and companies putting together carbon-credit projects. One safeguard, he says, is the threat that the U.N. can revoke an auditor's accreditation if the U.N. finds that the auditor has done substandard work.
The auditors strongly deny they're acting improperly. In their defense, the major auditors, among them DNV, Tüv Süd and SGS, have produced statistics showing that they are rejecting significant numbers of projects before they're proposed to the U.N. Between the start of the market and the end of 2006, the auditors rejected 7.7% of the developing-world projects proposed to them, according to Robert Dornau, director of the climate-change program at SGS.
Deciding whether a proposed project needs carbon-credit money to to be viable "is not black and white," Mr. Dornau says. Auditors are intent on showing they're fastidious because, he says, "we don't want to lose people's trust" in the carbon trade.
To Curtail
Emissions
In Turmoil
By JEFFREY BALL
April 12, 2008
A multibillion-dollar experiment designed to curb global warming is stumbling as regulators question whether the program is doing enough environmental good.
The United Nations is the main global policeman in an effort by wealthy nations to reduce the impact of their own pollution by paying for cleanups in the developing world. The program, known as the Clean Development Mechanism, is one of the most important coordinated efforts to attack global warming.
In recent months, however, U.N. regulators who administer the program have objected to dozens of these developing-world projects, ranging from hydroelectric plants to wind farms, questioning whether the projects would produce a real environmental payoff.
U.N. regulators are also concerned that some independent auditors of these projects, who are responsible for vetting their environmental legitimacy, have been letting project developers push through ventures of questionable environmental value.
The crackdown challenges a plank of the world's campaign against climate change: that polluters can pay someone else to clean up the mess. If the approach were to be discredited, curbing emissions could cost companies and consumers significantly more.
At issue, says Kai-Uwe Barani Schmidt, the U.N. panel's top administrator, is a conflict between "private-sector ambitions and the environmental integrity of the system."
As companies world-wide face government pressure to pollute less, the U.N. program gives them a cheaper alternative to cutting their own emissions. Instead, they can pay for the right to pollute by buying "carbon credits," essentially permission slips to spew carbon dioxide. Sale of the credits is supposed to help fund clean-air projects in China and other developing countries that would otherwise be too costly to build.
Last month, the panel declined to authorize the sale of carbon credits from two wind farms in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Backers of the projects, which have a combined 22 turbines, said their economic success depended on revenue from the sale of carbon credits. The U.N. panel said it wasn't persuaded.
The U.N. has rejected numerous other proposals on similar grounds since last summer. Among them: A Brazilian corn-processing factory, two Indian sugar mills and two Malaysian palm-oil plants. All were designed to install equipment to generate energy from renewable materials like wood scraps, fruit bunches and other waste. That would reduce the need for fossil fuels.
Developing-world projects like these are part of the burgeoning global carbon trade. In total, the global carbon market last year was worth 40.4 billion euros , according to Point Carbon, a Norway-based industry consultant. Of that total, Western companies and governments invested six billion euros last year in credits from projects in the developing world, nearly double the prior year, Point Carbon says.
In 2004 and 2005, as projects began to trickle in, the lightly staffed office of the U.N. Clean Development Mechanism's executive board approved virtually all of them. But as the number of proposed projects soared, the panel hired more staff and late last year tightened standards. In 2007, it rejected 9% of proposed projects, and held up another 21% for further review, according to U.N. figures -- many of which required changes before getting the go-ahead. The U.N. demanded more financial data to prove many projects needed carbon-credit revenue to be feasible.
The U.N. says it isn't suggesting that most of the developing-word projects are illegitimate. Evaluating whether a project would have been built without carbon-credit revenue is a complex judgment call, says the U.N.'s Mr. Schmidt. It represents "one of the biggest challenges" of the current system.
The average developing-world carbon credit -- which grants permission to the buyer to emit a ton of carbon dioxide -- sells on the market for $16 to $24. The U.N. issued credits last year worth roughly $1.2 billion to $1.8 billion.
The carbon market was created by the Kyoto Protocol, a 1997 global treaty underlying environmental rules already in effect for much of the world and now being considered by the U.S. Congress. Most buyers of developing-world credits are in Japan and Europe. U.S. companies aren't buying them in significant numbers, market analysts say.
The U.N. regulators are questioning the actions of two main players in the carbon market: Project developers, who put together projects in order to sell the credits to Western industrial buyers; and the auditing firms that inspect and certify to the U.N. that the projects are environmentally legitimate.
A dozen or so project developers, most based in Europe, dominate the business. Among the largest is EcoSecurities Ltd. of Oxford, England. The U.N. has rejected several of its projects, often contending they would have been financially viable without the revenue from credits.
Bruce Usher, the New York-based chief executive of EcoSecurities, says the company's projects are environmentally legitimate. Last November, largely in response to the U.N. crackdown, EcoSecurities said it was writing off a chunk of the carbon credits it had promised the market it would deliver. Since then, the company's shares, traded on the London Stock Exchange's AIM index, have fallen 67%.
Three auditors dominate the business. All three -- Det Norske Veritas, based in Norway; Tüv Süd AG, based in Germany; and SGS Group, based in Switzerland -- are major European consulting firms for whom the carbon market is a small but growing franchise.
The auditors argue that they're not to blame for the questionable quality of some proposed projects. In a presentation to U.N. officials last fall, the head of Tüv Süd's carbon business told U.N. officials that the quality of projects the auditors are receiving from carbon brokers is "going down," according to the U.N. panel's Mr. Schmidt, who was at the meeting.
In an interview, the Tüv Süd executive, Werner Betzenbichler, declined to discuss his comments in the U.N. meeting. But he confirmed the substance of his presentation.
"There is a high incentive" for companies to put together environmentally questionable carbon-credit projects, "because there is a lot of money that can be earned," he said. "People are getting more inventive, so it's getting harder to detect the black sheep."
Luc Larmuseau, global director of climate-change services for DNV, echoed those thoughts. "We've seen some examples where we've got serious doubt," he says. DNV and the other auditors have prepared a dossier of their rejections and have sent it to U.N. regulators as part of their defense.
The issue came to a head in December, at a meeting between U.N. officials and auditors during a U.N. conference on climate-change policy in Bali, Indonesia. A member of the U.N. board, Christiana Figueres, expressed concern that the system may be open to what she called "collusion" between auditors and project developers to push through environmentally dubious projects.
Ms. Figueres confirms that she used the term in the December meeting, but says she didn't intend to suggest that auditors are purposely recommending that the U.N. approve projects whose legitimacy the auditors doubt. Rather, she says, she was suggesting "a systemic collusion in which the [U.N.] board is being put in a position of having to do an in-depth review of these projects because [the auditors] are not doing it."
Ms. Figueres, a consultant living in Washington, D.C., left the U.N. board in January, when her term representing her native Costa Rica was up.
The U.N.'s Mr. Schmidt confirms that members of the U.N. panel "are aware of the clear and perceived risk of collusion" between auditors and companies putting together carbon-credit projects. One safeguard, he says, is the threat that the U.N. can revoke an auditor's accreditation if the U.N. finds that the auditor has done substandard work.
The auditors strongly deny they're acting improperly. In their defense, the major auditors, among them DNV, Tüv Süd and SGS, have produced statistics showing that they are rejecting significant numbers of projects before they're proposed to the U.N. Between the start of the market and the end of 2006, the auditors rejected 7.7% of the developing-world projects proposed to them, according to Robert Dornau, director of the climate-change program at SGS.
Deciding whether a proposed project needs carbon-credit money to to be viable "is not black and white," Mr. Dornau says. Auditors are intent on showing they're fastidious because, he says, "we don't want to lose people's trust" in the carbon trade.
Sunday, April 06, 2008
Facebook's "Which country are you?"
You belong to Switzerland
Your room's a mess. Your house is a mess. Heck, your life is a mess. It all used to be really beautiful, and someone even compared you to Paris once, but that's all been replaced with heartache and struggle. You're small, have been influenced by outsiders for too long, and don't know what to think about religion. At least you smell rather pleasant!
Your room's a mess. Your house is a mess. Heck, your life is a mess. It all used to be really beautiful, and someone even compared you to Paris once, but that's all been replaced with heartache and struggle. You're small, have been influenced by outsiders for too long, and don't know what to think about religion. At least you smell rather pleasant!
Saturday, April 05, 2008
Asian dramas are depressing
You know, my mum has been watching all these korean and hongkong tv dramas on dvd every day and every night. And I just notice one thing. They are all so depressing! These TV families are full of family feuds, fighting, cheating, divorce, murder and every bad thing that you can ever imagine. Their lives are absolutely pathetic, depressing, but hell, asians like to watch them! What's wrong with Asian TV?
Can't we have hits like the Cosby Show? Sex and the city? Friends? Seinfeld? Okay those are comedies. Yeah action thriller 24 is kinda depressing. Prison Break and Heroes is kinda optimistic. Or at least the stars are working together towards a better tomorrow. CSI, Alias, ER, at least it looks as if there's light at the end of the tunnel.
Asians actually watch their pathetic depressing TV shows and laugh! That's the most amazing thing. I feel that work is depressing enough, I can't be watching depressing TV shows at night and laugh about it. My TV staple? You're talking bout SouthPark, Colbert Report or the Daily Show. Yah it's all online cos my parents are watching the stupid DVDs on the TV heh.
Well back to why people watch depressing shows and laugh. They laugh cos they feel their life is depressing and miserable too, but hey, there's somebody else more pathetic than them on TV, and hella stupid too! Perhaps its a reflection of reality, and the laughter is kinda in a sadistic way. Otherwise, even on local channel 8 I don't see why anybody would take pleasure in watching anything after 9pm.....
We in Asia need to lighten up. Yeah, cities are overcrowded and overpopulated everywhere, but we need to enjoy the sweet smell of leaves falling in the park and some crude jokes on Seinfeld. We need to laugh more on the train and smile when we get into the office in the morning. Otherwise our society will remain the sorry pathetic depressive state that it is currently in, where laughter appears sadistically only in the presence of depressing soap operas...
World class? Wait long long lah!
Can't we have hits like the Cosby Show? Sex and the city? Friends? Seinfeld? Okay those are comedies. Yeah action thriller 24 is kinda depressing. Prison Break and Heroes is kinda optimistic. Or at least the stars are working together towards a better tomorrow. CSI, Alias, ER, at least it looks as if there's light at the end of the tunnel.
Asians actually watch their pathetic depressing TV shows and laugh! That's the most amazing thing. I feel that work is depressing enough, I can't be watching depressing TV shows at night and laugh about it. My TV staple? You're talking bout SouthPark, Colbert Report or the Daily Show. Yah it's all online cos my parents are watching the stupid DVDs on the TV heh.
Well back to why people watch depressing shows and laugh. They laugh cos they feel their life is depressing and miserable too, but hey, there's somebody else more pathetic than them on TV, and hella stupid too! Perhaps its a reflection of reality, and the laughter is kinda in a sadistic way. Otherwise, even on local channel 8 I don't see why anybody would take pleasure in watching anything after 9pm.....
We in Asia need to lighten up. Yeah, cities are overcrowded and overpopulated everywhere, but we need to enjoy the sweet smell of leaves falling in the park and some crude jokes on Seinfeld. We need to laugh more on the train and smile when we get into the office in the morning. Otherwise our society will remain the sorry pathetic depressive state that it is currently in, where laughter appears sadistically only in the presence of depressing soap operas...
World class? Wait long long lah!
Friday, April 04, 2008
Quiet
It's kinda quiet in here huh? Well I've been spending late nights and eyes are usually tired by the end of the day. Guess my end of day routine ends up being watching the colbert report or the daily show rather than blogging.
So I was gonna volunteer at the museum by starting with their history lessons. Unfortunatly I procrastinated, and now the classes are all full so that's that. On hindsight this is probably better, I need more time to work out and time for myself on the weekends.
So what's the market outlook? My pick for this week is SBS transit. I think buses are doing well, and ridership will rise cos the government's giving more incentive for people to go scrap their cars. Yeah we really have way too many cars here. Too many people for that matter. It's so strange how it doesnt take me that long to get to work in the morning, but it takes hella long to get home. Maybe that's cos I don't start work that early. hmm....
I'll be on course for 3 wks starting monday. We have day off from course to go back to office on fridays, but I think that's just dumb. I'm not gonna lug my laptop around so I'll probably take leave and work from home on fridays.
Start of the new FY, somehow seems like not that much excitement. Some unexpected bonus was good, but it looks like other ministries had way more. Do I care? Hell, more money is always good!
Key words for today: Total Return strategy. Make money all the time every time, don't care about benchmarks!
So I was gonna volunteer at the museum by starting with their history lessons. Unfortunatly I procrastinated, and now the classes are all full so that's that. On hindsight this is probably better, I need more time to work out and time for myself on the weekends.
So what's the market outlook? My pick for this week is SBS transit. I think buses are doing well, and ridership will rise cos the government's giving more incentive for people to go scrap their cars. Yeah we really have way too many cars here. Too many people for that matter. It's so strange how it doesnt take me that long to get to work in the morning, but it takes hella long to get home. Maybe that's cos I don't start work that early. hmm....
I'll be on course for 3 wks starting monday. We have day off from course to go back to office on fridays, but I think that's just dumb. I'm not gonna lug my laptop around so I'll probably take leave and work from home on fridays.
Start of the new FY, somehow seems like not that much excitement. Some unexpected bonus was good, but it looks like other ministries had way more. Do I care? Hell, more money is always good!
Key words for today: Total Return strategy. Make money all the time every time, don't care about benchmarks!
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Can facebook make money?
Online social networks
Everywhere and nowhere
Mar 19th 2008 | SAN FRANCISCO
From The Economist print edition
Social networking will become a ubiquitous feature of online life. That does not mean it is a business
Illustration by David Simonds
A LARGE but long-in-the-tooth technology company hoping to become a bigger force in online advertising buys a small start-up in a sector that everybody agrees is the next big thing. A decade ago, this was Microsoft buying Hotmail—the firm that established web-based e-mail as a must-have service for internet users, and promised to drive up page views, and thus advertising inventory, on the software giant's websites. This month it was AOL, a struggling web portal that is part of Time Warner, an old-media giant, buying Bebo, a small but up-and-coming online social network, for $850m.
Both deals, in their respective decades, illustrate a great paradox of the internet in that the premise underlying them is precisely half right and half wrong. The correct half is that a next big thing—web-mail then, social networking now—can indeed quickly become something that consumers expect from their favourite web portal. The non sequitur is to assume that the new service will be a revenue-generating business in its own right.
Web-mail has certainly not become a business. Admittedly, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo!, AOL and other providers of web-mail accounts do place advertisements on their web-mail offerings, but this is small beer. They offer e-mail—and volumes of free archival storage unimaginable a decade ago—because the service, including its associated address book, calendar, and other features, is cheap to deliver and keeps consumers engaged with their brands and websites, making users more likely to visit affiliated pages where advertising is more effective.
Social networking appears to be similar in this regard. The big internet and media companies have bid up the implicit valuations of MySpace, Facebook and others. But that does not mean there is a working revenue model. Sergey Brin, Google's co-founder, recently admitted that Google's “social networking inventory as a whole” was proving problematic and that the “monetisation work we were doing there didn't pan out as well as we had hoped.” Google has a contractual agreement with News Corp to place advertisements on its network, MySpace, and also owns its own network, Orkut. Clearly, Google is not making money from either.
Facebook, now allied to Microsoft, has fared worse. Its grand attempt to redefine the advertising industry by pioneering a new approach to social marketing, called Beacon, failed completely. Facebook's idea was to inform a user's friends whenever he bought something at certain online retailers, by running a small announcement inside the friends' “news feeds”. In theory, this was to become a new recommendation economy, an algorithmic form of word of mouth. In practice, users rebelled and privacy watchdogs cried foul. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's founder, admitted in December that “we simply did a bad job with this release” and apologised.
So it is entirely conceivable that social networking, like web-mail, will never make oodles of money. That, however, in no way detracts from its enormous utility. Social networking has made explicit the connections between people, so that a thriving ecosystem of small programs can exploit this “social graph” to enable friends to interact via games, greetings, video clips and so on.
Coming up for air
But should users really have to visit a specific website to do this sort of thing? “We will look back to 2008 and think it archaic and quaint that we had to go to a destination like Facebook or LinkedIn to be social,” says Charlene Li at Forrester Research, a consultancy. Future social networks, she thinks, “will be like air. They will be anywhere and everywhere we need and want them to be.” No more logging on to Facebook just to see the “news feed” of updates from your friends; instead it will come straight to your e-mail inbox, RSS reader or instant messenger. No need to upload photos to Facebook to show them to friends, since those with privacy permissions in your electronic address book can automatically get them.
The problem with today's social networks is that they are often closed to the outside web. The big networks have decided to be “open” toward independent programmers, to encourage them to write fun new software for them. But they are reluctant to become equally open towards their users, because the networks' lofty valuations depend on maximising their page views—so they maintain a tight grip on their users' information, to ensure that they keep coming back. As a result, avid internet users often maintain separate accounts on several social networks, instant-messaging services, photo-sharing and blogging sites, and usually cannot even send simple messages from one to the other. They must invite the same friends to each service separately. It is a drag.
Historically, online media tend to start this way. The early services, such as CompuServe, Prodigy or AOL, began as “walled gardens” before they opened up to become websites. The early e-mail services could send messages only within their own walls (rather as Facebook's messaging does today). Instant-messaging, too, started closed, but is gradually opening up. In social networking, this evolution is just beginning. Parts of the industry are collaborating in a “data portability workgroup” to let people move their friend lists and other information around the web. Others are pushing OpenID, a plan to create a single, federated sign-on system that people can use across many sites.
The opening of social networks may now accelerate thanks to that older next big thing, web-mail. As a technology, mail has come to seem rather old-fashioned. But Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft and other firms are now discovering that they may already have the ideal infrastructure for social networking in the form of the address books, in-boxes and calendars of their users. “E-mail in the wider sense is the most important social network,” says David Ascher, who manages Thunderbird, a cutting-edge open-source e-mail application, for the Mozilla Foundation, which also oversees the popular Firefox web browser.
That is because the extended in-box contains invaluable and dynamically updated information about human connections. On Facebook, a social graph notoriously deteriorates after the initial thrill of finding old friends from school wears off. By contrast, an e-mail account has access to the entire address book and can infer information from the frequency and intensity of contact as it occurs. Joe gets e-mails from Jack and Jane, but opens only Jane's; Joe has Jane in his calendar tomorrow, and is instant-messaging with her right now; Joe tagged Jack “work only” in his address book. Perhaps Joe's party photos should be visible to Jane, but not Jack.
This kind of social intelligence can be applied across many services on the open web. Better yet, if there is no pressure to make a business out of it, it can remain intimate and discreet. Facebook has an economic incentive to publish ever more data about its users, says Mr Ascher, whereas Thunderbird, which is an open-source project, can let users minimise what they share. Social networking may end up being everywhere, and yet nowhere.
Everywhere and nowhere
Mar 19th 2008 | SAN FRANCISCO
From The Economist print edition
Social networking will become a ubiquitous feature of online life. That does not mean it is a business
Illustration by David Simonds
A LARGE but long-in-the-tooth technology company hoping to become a bigger force in online advertising buys a small start-up in a sector that everybody agrees is the next big thing. A decade ago, this was Microsoft buying Hotmail—the firm that established web-based e-mail as a must-have service for internet users, and promised to drive up page views, and thus advertising inventory, on the software giant's websites. This month it was AOL, a struggling web portal that is part of Time Warner, an old-media giant, buying Bebo, a small but up-and-coming online social network, for $850m.
Both deals, in their respective decades, illustrate a great paradox of the internet in that the premise underlying them is precisely half right and half wrong. The correct half is that a next big thing—web-mail then, social networking now—can indeed quickly become something that consumers expect from their favourite web portal. The non sequitur is to assume that the new service will be a revenue-generating business in its own right.
Web-mail has certainly not become a business. Admittedly, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo!, AOL and other providers of web-mail accounts do place advertisements on their web-mail offerings, but this is small beer. They offer e-mail—and volumes of free archival storage unimaginable a decade ago—because the service, including its associated address book, calendar, and other features, is cheap to deliver and keeps consumers engaged with their brands and websites, making users more likely to visit affiliated pages where advertising is more effective.
Social networking appears to be similar in this regard. The big internet and media companies have bid up the implicit valuations of MySpace, Facebook and others. But that does not mean there is a working revenue model. Sergey Brin, Google's co-founder, recently admitted that Google's “social networking inventory as a whole” was proving problematic and that the “monetisation work we were doing there didn't pan out as well as we had hoped.” Google has a contractual agreement with News Corp to place advertisements on its network, MySpace, and also owns its own network, Orkut. Clearly, Google is not making money from either.
Facebook, now allied to Microsoft, has fared worse. Its grand attempt to redefine the advertising industry by pioneering a new approach to social marketing, called Beacon, failed completely. Facebook's idea was to inform a user's friends whenever he bought something at certain online retailers, by running a small announcement inside the friends' “news feeds”. In theory, this was to become a new recommendation economy, an algorithmic form of word of mouth. In practice, users rebelled and privacy watchdogs cried foul. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's founder, admitted in December that “we simply did a bad job with this release” and apologised.
So it is entirely conceivable that social networking, like web-mail, will never make oodles of money. That, however, in no way detracts from its enormous utility. Social networking has made explicit the connections between people, so that a thriving ecosystem of small programs can exploit this “social graph” to enable friends to interact via games, greetings, video clips and so on.
Coming up for air
But should users really have to visit a specific website to do this sort of thing? “We will look back to 2008 and think it archaic and quaint that we had to go to a destination like Facebook or LinkedIn to be social,” says Charlene Li at Forrester Research, a consultancy. Future social networks, she thinks, “will be like air. They will be anywhere and everywhere we need and want them to be.” No more logging on to Facebook just to see the “news feed” of updates from your friends; instead it will come straight to your e-mail inbox, RSS reader or instant messenger. No need to upload photos to Facebook to show them to friends, since those with privacy permissions in your electronic address book can automatically get them.
The problem with today's social networks is that they are often closed to the outside web. The big networks have decided to be “open” toward independent programmers, to encourage them to write fun new software for them. But they are reluctant to become equally open towards their users, because the networks' lofty valuations depend on maximising their page views—so they maintain a tight grip on their users' information, to ensure that they keep coming back. As a result, avid internet users often maintain separate accounts on several social networks, instant-messaging services, photo-sharing and blogging sites, and usually cannot even send simple messages from one to the other. They must invite the same friends to each service separately. It is a drag.
Historically, online media tend to start this way. The early services, such as CompuServe, Prodigy or AOL, began as “walled gardens” before they opened up to become websites. The early e-mail services could send messages only within their own walls (rather as Facebook's messaging does today). Instant-messaging, too, started closed, but is gradually opening up. In social networking, this evolution is just beginning. Parts of the industry are collaborating in a “data portability workgroup” to let people move their friend lists and other information around the web. Others are pushing OpenID, a plan to create a single, federated sign-on system that people can use across many sites.
The opening of social networks may now accelerate thanks to that older next big thing, web-mail. As a technology, mail has come to seem rather old-fashioned. But Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft and other firms are now discovering that they may already have the ideal infrastructure for social networking in the form of the address books, in-boxes and calendars of their users. “E-mail in the wider sense is the most important social network,” says David Ascher, who manages Thunderbird, a cutting-edge open-source e-mail application, for the Mozilla Foundation, which also oversees the popular Firefox web browser.
That is because the extended in-box contains invaluable and dynamically updated information about human connections. On Facebook, a social graph notoriously deteriorates after the initial thrill of finding old friends from school wears off. By contrast, an e-mail account has access to the entire address book and can infer information from the frequency and intensity of contact as it occurs. Joe gets e-mails from Jack and Jane, but opens only Jane's; Joe has Jane in his calendar tomorrow, and is instant-messaging with her right now; Joe tagged Jack “work only” in his address book. Perhaps Joe's party photos should be visible to Jane, but not Jack.
This kind of social intelligence can be applied across many services on the open web. Better yet, if there is no pressure to make a business out of it, it can remain intimate and discreet. Facebook has an economic incentive to publish ever more data about its users, says Mr Ascher, whereas Thunderbird, which is an open-source project, can let users minimise what they share. Social networking may end up being everywhere, and yet nowhere.
Saturday, March 22, 2008
Educationg prisoners (maybe the easiest way to get into mba for free!)
Rehabilitating prisoners
A new deal
Mar 19th 2008 | CLEVELAND, TEXAS
From The Economist print edition
Finding promise in prisoners
SAM AMAYA was six years old when he first pulled a gun on another person—his father, who was beating his mother. At eight he would produce the gun when he wanted his sister to change the channel from a soap opera to a cartoon. At 13, after a fight with his father, he fled from his house to his school's playground, where some members of the Two-Six gang were meeting. He was initiated later that afternoon. He began running drugs as a teenager, picking up consignments of marijuana and cocaine near the border with Mexico and selling them around Texas.
With such a background, it is perhaps not surprising that Mr Amaya was arrested after pistol-whipping a girlfriend and is today, at 28, about to finish a long sentence for aggravated assault. Statistics would suggest that he will be back before too long: according to the Pew Centre on the States, more than half of released offenders return to prison within three years, and Texas has the country's second-highest rate of incarceration. In fact, Mr Amaya's future should be more cheerful than those numbers suggest.
Just before he is released on June 23rd, if all goes to plan, Mr Amaya will graduate from the Prison Entrepreneurship Programme (PEP), a remarkable effort to prepare some of Texas's harder cases for their transition back to freedom. The programme was founded in 2004 by Catherine Rohr, a venture capitalist who changed careers after visiting several Texas prisons.
Her premise is that many criminals are intelligent people with good heads for business and healthy appetites for risk, and that these traits can be put to productive use. She is particularly interested in people who have already demonstrated these skills—for example by running a successful drug business or achieving a high rank in a gang.
During the past four years PEP has put more than 300 inmates through four months of business classes and study. They meet MBA students to develop business plans, and hundreds of businessmen have taken part in special events at the prison. About 40 graduates already have businesses up and running. The vast majority are employed. Fewer than 5% have reoffended. The programme is privately funded, and that success rate has helped it grow. In 2004 Ms Rohr used her savings to get things going; this year the operating budget is $3.2m.
PEP's success is partly due to the fact that the programme takes only the most serious applicants. Prospective participants first fill out a lengthy questionnaire. Those that pass have an interview, where Ms Rohr claims she rumbles the fakers. Once selected, a participant can be booted out at any time for a variety of infractions, such as cheating or maintaining gang membership. The current class started with 87 members and is down to 39.
Participants say that PEP provides male role models, and helps them have hope for the future. Ms Rohr considers it her job to build character. “They're not in here because they were bad businessmen,” she says. “They're in here because they were lacking moral values in their lives.” She assigns them ethical case studies and leads discussions on everything from honesty to sexual relationships.
Texas is making its own efforts to improve results for released offenders, but released prisoners typically get just $100 and a bus ticket to Houston or Dallas. PEP picks up its graduates at the gate with packages of sheets, toiletries and business suits. It helps them find work and housing, and even offers a free trip to the dentist. According to Gregory Mack, a participant, all this makes a big difference. Mr Mack has been in and out of prison on drug charges for the past two decades. He completed a behaviour-modification programme in 2002 as a condition for parole, but its value was limited. “They really had nothing to offer outside the walls,” he explains. By 2005 he was behind bars again. Mr Amaya now has a chance to avoid that fate.
A new deal
Mar 19th 2008 | CLEVELAND, TEXAS
From The Economist print edition
Finding promise in prisoners
SAM AMAYA was six years old when he first pulled a gun on another person—his father, who was beating his mother. At eight he would produce the gun when he wanted his sister to change the channel from a soap opera to a cartoon. At 13, after a fight with his father, he fled from his house to his school's playground, where some members of the Two-Six gang were meeting. He was initiated later that afternoon. He began running drugs as a teenager, picking up consignments of marijuana and cocaine near the border with Mexico and selling them around Texas.
With such a background, it is perhaps not surprising that Mr Amaya was arrested after pistol-whipping a girlfriend and is today, at 28, about to finish a long sentence for aggravated assault. Statistics would suggest that he will be back before too long: according to the Pew Centre on the States, more than half of released offenders return to prison within three years, and Texas has the country's second-highest rate of incarceration. In fact, Mr Amaya's future should be more cheerful than those numbers suggest.
Just before he is released on June 23rd, if all goes to plan, Mr Amaya will graduate from the Prison Entrepreneurship Programme (PEP), a remarkable effort to prepare some of Texas's harder cases for their transition back to freedom. The programme was founded in 2004 by Catherine Rohr, a venture capitalist who changed careers after visiting several Texas prisons.
Her premise is that many criminals are intelligent people with good heads for business and healthy appetites for risk, and that these traits can be put to productive use. She is particularly interested in people who have already demonstrated these skills—for example by running a successful drug business or achieving a high rank in a gang.
During the past four years PEP has put more than 300 inmates through four months of business classes and study. They meet MBA students to develop business plans, and hundreds of businessmen have taken part in special events at the prison. About 40 graduates already have businesses up and running. The vast majority are employed. Fewer than 5% have reoffended. The programme is privately funded, and that success rate has helped it grow. In 2004 Ms Rohr used her savings to get things going; this year the operating budget is $3.2m.
PEP's success is partly due to the fact that the programme takes only the most serious applicants. Prospective participants first fill out a lengthy questionnaire. Those that pass have an interview, where Ms Rohr claims she rumbles the fakers. Once selected, a participant can be booted out at any time for a variety of infractions, such as cheating or maintaining gang membership. The current class started with 87 members and is down to 39.
Participants say that PEP provides male role models, and helps them have hope for the future. Ms Rohr considers it her job to build character. “They're not in here because they were bad businessmen,” she says. “They're in here because they were lacking moral values in their lives.” She assigns them ethical case studies and leads discussions on everything from honesty to sexual relationships.
Texas is making its own efforts to improve results for released offenders, but released prisoners typically get just $100 and a bus ticket to Houston or Dallas. PEP picks up its graduates at the gate with packages of sheets, toiletries and business suits. It helps them find work and housing, and even offers a free trip to the dentist. According to Gregory Mack, a participant, all this makes a big difference. Mr Mack has been in and out of prison on drug charges for the past two decades. He completed a behaviour-modification programme in 2002 as a condition for parole, but its value was limited. “They really had nothing to offer outside the walls,” he explains. By 2005 he was behind bars again. Mr Amaya now has a chance to avoid that fate.
Thursday, March 13, 2008
Too much time spent on face
Hold the Criticism in China
Where Face is Everything
March 11, 2008
Note to readers: The Chinese version of this column is available here
A Chinese friend in New York is upset at all the news reports about Chinese product recalls.
"I felt as if I lost my own face," she said, referring to the Chinese term that refers roughly to one's pride. "Why is it always Chinese companies that put money ahead of everything else?" she asked. "How will Americans think of us?"
My friend's comments are typical of how Chinese react to criticism and unflattering news coverage of China in the West. Most Chinese care a great deal about how foreigners think of China and the Chinese. When the portrayal is positive, Chinese are proud that they're given a lot of "face." When it's negative, they can feel humiliated or even angry, believing that the conclusion is based on bias.
JOIN THE DISCUSSION
How do you feel when you hear criticism of the U.S. and its government? Do you take it personally? Share your opinion with fellow readers in an online forum.Many foreigners in China find themselves frequently running into questions, such as: How do you like China, Chinese, and the Beijing Olympics? Most of the time, there's only one acceptable answer: "Yes, it's great." If there's a "but," keep it to yourself. Air your doubts, and many Chinese won't receive it well at all. Be prepared to be called a "China basher" or told that you're ignorant of China.
Kyle Caldwell, an American running an English school, a restaurant and a bar in Qingdao, Shandong province, said that he's learned all the "correct" answers. When I asked the 25-year-old what the real answers are, he paused and said, "I have to be very careful because I'm doing business in China." He then added, "In general, I'm a very positive person."
It's not that we Chinese aren't critical of our government or each other. But when the criticism comes from foreigners, it instantly becomes a different story. For example, Chinese readers have very different reactions to the same coverage of a contaminated anticancer drug in Nanfang Weekend, a well-respected Chinese newspaper, and on The Wall Street Journal's Chinese Web site www.chinese.wsj.com, which publishes Journal stories translated into Chinese as well as original content, like this column.
Readers' comments on the Nanfang Weekend story, posted on China's popular Tianya online forum, uniformly chastise the pharmaceutical company's behavior, with some people calling it "greedy" and "irresponsible." Several readers used the word "tragic" in their comments. The Journal story also attracted some angry comments, not targeted at the company, but at the Journal for doing such a story in the first place. Some comments were critical of the pharmaceutical company.
"I believe my Motherland can handle it. You foreigners should stop interfering," wrote a reader with the pen name "Phoenix." A reader called Eric wrote, "What are the editorial standards of The Wall Street Journal? Every time (I) read its news, it's full of slander, false accusations and suspicions. (I) hope the government agency in charge of the press should pay attention to the publication's circulation in China."
What I don't understand is that if this type of stories can at least inform readers (who are also consumers and investors), why would some of them want to bury their heads in the sand and pretend nothing is happening? Why do they think more highly of China's face than their fellow countrymen's (and possibly their own) livelihood and life?
In late 2006, a friend of mine saw an old woman begging on the Beijing subway. Nobody paid much attention to her until she stopped in front of a white man, possibly the only foreigner in the car. A fellow passenger, an old lady with heavy Beijing accent, yelled at the beggar, "How dare you beg for money from a foreigner? Don't you know you're making the Chinese people lose face?" It had never occurred to me that the beggars on New York subways mean a loss of face for the U.S. or Americans. Every country has its own problems.
A good example of the face issue comes from a reader's comment on a Journal story on Chinese.wsj.com about the controversial China Central Television tower, one of the monumental buildings constructed in anticipation of the Beijing Olympics Games. Many Beijing residents dislike the unusually shaped design.
The reader, signed with the name "titans," wrote, now that China claims to be the third most-powerful nation in the world, "when foreigners see the old TV tower, they may well suspect if Beijing is lying."
"My suggestion is that every Beijing resident should make at least 6,000 yuan ($845) a month," "titans" wrote. Otherwise, they should be sent to the neighboring, less developed Hebei province because their clothing and housing conditions could harm the image of Chinese, "titans" said.
Why do Chinese care so much about what foreigners think of us?
It's a complex question. Here are a few possible reasons:
First, for Chinese, the state, nation and individuals are closely integrated. To criticize one is to attack the whole. Although the government isn't elected by the people, and Chinese regularly criticize government policies and officials in private and semi-privately on the Internet, they often jump to the government's defense when the criticism comes from foreigners. The loss of face on the government's part is a loss for the whole Chinese nation.
Second, China has a victim's mentality after suffering poverty and foreign invasions for so much of its recent history. When we are criticized by foreigners, our insecurity could lead us to believe that the commentators are either biased, jealous of China's achievements or scared of China's rise as a world power.
We Chinese have every reason to be proud of ourselves for our achievements in the past 30 years. But we need to have more confidence in ourselves. The more confident and self-possessed China and the Chinese are, the more open and welcome others are likely to be with us.
Third, many Chinese don't believe there's such a thing as an independent press. The most powerful media entities in China are supposed to serve as "mouthpieces" of the Communist Party. Chinese often believe what is said in the press more or less represents government positions on the issue. To be sure, there are serious Chinese journalists and publications that report on corruptions and question government decisions, especially those on the local level. But they often operate in grey areas and have to toe the line on sensitive policy and political issues.
Many Chinese are also suspicious of the conflicts of interests between business news reporters and companies. For example, in their comments on the Chinese WSJ site, many readers accused the two Journal reporters, who wrote a story last week about Ping An Insurance (Group) Co.'s stock offering, of peddling the stock on behalf of the company. I was shocked by the accusations. I'm not sure if they would believe me that all Journal reporters have to sign a conflict of interest declaration once a year, which forbids people from trading in stocks of companies they cover. And the declaration is not just a piece of paper. People take it very seriously here.
I'm not saying that the Western press has always been fair in their coverage about China. Some journalists do view China through colored lens. Whenever I hear Lou Dobbs on CNN say "Communist China," I grab the remote control. Few Chinese believe we're still a Communist country. But these kinds of reports don't represent the whole, and the mainstream American press tries hard to be balanced and responsible.
Where Face is Everything
March 11, 2008
Note to readers: The Chinese version of this column is available here
A Chinese friend in New York is upset at all the news reports about Chinese product recalls.
"I felt as if I lost my own face," she said, referring to the Chinese term that refers roughly to one's pride. "Why is it always Chinese companies that put money ahead of everything else?" she asked. "How will Americans think of us?"
My friend's comments are typical of how Chinese react to criticism and unflattering news coverage of China in the West. Most Chinese care a great deal about how foreigners think of China and the Chinese. When the portrayal is positive, Chinese are proud that they're given a lot of "face." When it's negative, they can feel humiliated or even angry, believing that the conclusion is based on bias.
JOIN THE DISCUSSION
How do you feel when you hear criticism of the U.S. and its government? Do you take it personally? Share your opinion with fellow readers in an online forum.Many foreigners in China find themselves frequently running into questions, such as: How do you like China, Chinese, and the Beijing Olympics? Most of the time, there's only one acceptable answer: "Yes, it's great." If there's a "but," keep it to yourself. Air your doubts, and many Chinese won't receive it well at all. Be prepared to be called a "China basher" or told that you're ignorant of China.
Kyle Caldwell, an American running an English school, a restaurant and a bar in Qingdao, Shandong province, said that he's learned all the "correct" answers. When I asked the 25-year-old what the real answers are, he paused and said, "I have to be very careful because I'm doing business in China." He then added, "In general, I'm a very positive person."
It's not that we Chinese aren't critical of our government or each other. But when the criticism comes from foreigners, it instantly becomes a different story. For example, Chinese readers have very different reactions to the same coverage of a contaminated anticancer drug in Nanfang Weekend, a well-respected Chinese newspaper, and on The Wall Street Journal's Chinese Web site www.chinese.wsj.com, which publishes Journal stories translated into Chinese as well as original content, like this column.
Readers' comments on the Nanfang Weekend story, posted on China's popular Tianya online forum, uniformly chastise the pharmaceutical company's behavior, with some people calling it "greedy" and "irresponsible." Several readers used the word "tragic" in their comments. The Journal story also attracted some angry comments, not targeted at the company, but at the Journal for doing such a story in the first place. Some comments were critical of the pharmaceutical company.
"I believe my Motherland can handle it. You foreigners should stop interfering," wrote a reader with the pen name "Phoenix." A reader called Eric wrote, "What are the editorial standards of The Wall Street Journal? Every time (I) read its news, it's full of slander, false accusations and suspicions. (I) hope the government agency in charge of the press should pay attention to the publication's circulation in China."
What I don't understand is that if this type of stories can at least inform readers (who are also consumers and investors), why would some of them want to bury their heads in the sand and pretend nothing is happening? Why do they think more highly of China's face than their fellow countrymen's (and possibly their own) livelihood and life?
In late 2006, a friend of mine saw an old woman begging on the Beijing subway. Nobody paid much attention to her until she stopped in front of a white man, possibly the only foreigner in the car. A fellow passenger, an old lady with heavy Beijing accent, yelled at the beggar, "How dare you beg for money from a foreigner? Don't you know you're making the Chinese people lose face?" It had never occurred to me that the beggars on New York subways mean a loss of face for the U.S. or Americans. Every country has its own problems.
A good example of the face issue comes from a reader's comment on a Journal story on Chinese.wsj.com about the controversial China Central Television tower, one of the monumental buildings constructed in anticipation of the Beijing Olympics Games. Many Beijing residents dislike the unusually shaped design.
The reader, signed with the name "titans," wrote, now that China claims to be the third most-powerful nation in the world, "when foreigners see the old TV tower, they may well suspect if Beijing is lying."
"My suggestion is that every Beijing resident should make at least 6,000 yuan ($845) a month," "titans" wrote. Otherwise, they should be sent to the neighboring, less developed Hebei province because their clothing and housing conditions could harm the image of Chinese, "titans" said.
Why do Chinese care so much about what foreigners think of us?
It's a complex question. Here are a few possible reasons:
First, for Chinese, the state, nation and individuals are closely integrated. To criticize one is to attack the whole. Although the government isn't elected by the people, and Chinese regularly criticize government policies and officials in private and semi-privately on the Internet, they often jump to the government's defense when the criticism comes from foreigners. The loss of face on the government's part is a loss for the whole Chinese nation.
Second, China has a victim's mentality after suffering poverty and foreign invasions for so much of its recent history. When we are criticized by foreigners, our insecurity could lead us to believe that the commentators are either biased, jealous of China's achievements or scared of China's rise as a world power.
We Chinese have every reason to be proud of ourselves for our achievements in the past 30 years. But we need to have more confidence in ourselves. The more confident and self-possessed China and the Chinese are, the more open and welcome others are likely to be with us.
Third, many Chinese don't believe there's such a thing as an independent press. The most powerful media entities in China are supposed to serve as "mouthpieces" of the Communist Party. Chinese often believe what is said in the press more or less represents government positions on the issue. To be sure, there are serious Chinese journalists and publications that report on corruptions and question government decisions, especially those on the local level. But they often operate in grey areas and have to toe the line on sensitive policy and political issues.
Many Chinese are also suspicious of the conflicts of interests between business news reporters and companies. For example, in their comments on the Chinese WSJ site, many readers accused the two Journal reporters, who wrote a story last week about Ping An Insurance (Group) Co.'s stock offering, of peddling the stock on behalf of the company. I was shocked by the accusations. I'm not sure if they would believe me that all Journal reporters have to sign a conflict of interest declaration once a year, which forbids people from trading in stocks of companies they cover. And the declaration is not just a piece of paper. People take it very seriously here.
I'm not saying that the Western press has always been fair in their coverage about China. Some journalists do view China through colored lens. Whenever I hear Lou Dobbs on CNN say "Communist China," I grab the remote control. Few Chinese believe we're still a Communist country. But these kinds of reports don't represent the whole, and the mainstream American press tries hard to be balanced and responsible.
Monday, March 10, 2008
crazy lion videos!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LU8DDYz68kM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jbFpQe271Y&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=geRcSCH1nZI&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jbFpQe271Y&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=geRcSCH1nZI&feature=related
Sunday, March 09, 2008
California Love
Possible 2 week california work trip coming up! Oh yeah, thats right! Let's have some good 'ol California song that I haven't heard in a while:
California love!
[1]-California...knows how to party
California...knows how to party
In the citaaay of L.A.
In the citaaay of good ol' Watts
In the citaaay, the city of Compton
We keep it rockin! We keep it rockin!
Now let me welcome everybody to the wild, wild west
A state that's untouchable like Elliot Ness
The track hits ya eardrum like a slug to ya chest
Pack a vest for your Jimmy in the city of sex
We in that sunshine state with a bomb ass hemp beat
the state where ya never find a dance floor empty
And pimps be on a mission for them greens
lean mean money-makin-machines servin fiends
I been in the game for ten years makin rap tunes
ever since honeys was wearin sassoon
Now it's '95 and they clock me and watch me
Diamonds shinin lookin like I robbed Liberace
It's all good, from Diego to tha Bay
Your city is tha bomb if your city makin pay
Throw up a finger if ya feel the same way
Dre puttin it down for
Californ-i-a
[repeat 1]
[2]-Shake it shake it baby
Shake it shake it baby
Shake it shake it mama
Shake it Cali
Shake it shake it baby
Shake it shake it shake it shake it...
Out on bail fresh outta jail, California dreamin
Soon as I stepped on the scene, I'm hearin hoochies screamin
Fiendin for money and alcohol
the life of a west side playa where cowards die and its all ball
Only in Cali where we riot not rally to live and die
In L.A. we wearin Chucks not Ballies (that's right)
Dressed in Locs and khaki suits and ride is what we do
Flossin but have caution we collide with other crews
Famous cause we program worldwide
Let'em recognize from Long Beach to Rosecrans
Bumpin and grindin like a slow jam, it's west side
So you know the row won't bow down to no man
Say what you say
But give me that bomb beat from Dre
Let me serenade the streets of L.A.
From Oakland to Sacktown
The Bay Area and back down
Cali is where they put they mack down
Give me love!
[rpt 1]
[dre] now make it shake...
[rpt 2]
uh, yeah, uh, longbeach in tha house, uh yeah
Oaktown, Oakland definately in tha house hahaha
Frisko, Frisko
[Tupac] hey, you know LA is up in this
Pasadena, where you at
yeah, Inglewood, Inglewood always up to no good
(Tupac) even Hollywood tryin to get a piece baby
Sacramento, sacramento where ya at? yeah
Throw it up y'all, throw it up, Throw it up
Let's show these fools how we do this on that west side
Cause you and I know it's tha best side
yeah, That's riight
west coast, west coast
uh, California Love
California Love
California love!
[1]-California...knows how to party
California...knows how to party
In the citaaay of L.A.
In the citaaay of good ol' Watts
In the citaaay, the city of Compton
We keep it rockin! We keep it rockin!
Now let me welcome everybody to the wild, wild west
A state that's untouchable like Elliot Ness
The track hits ya eardrum like a slug to ya chest
Pack a vest for your Jimmy in the city of sex
We in that sunshine state with a bomb ass hemp beat
the state where ya never find a dance floor empty
And pimps be on a mission for them greens
lean mean money-makin-machines servin fiends
I been in the game for ten years makin rap tunes
ever since honeys was wearin sassoon
Now it's '95 and they clock me and watch me
Diamonds shinin lookin like I robbed Liberace
It's all good, from Diego to tha Bay
Your city is tha bomb if your city makin pay
Throw up a finger if ya feel the same way
Dre puttin it down for
Californ-i-a
[repeat 1]
[2]-Shake it shake it baby
Shake it shake it baby
Shake it shake it mama
Shake it Cali
Shake it shake it baby
Shake it shake it shake it shake it...
Out on bail fresh outta jail, California dreamin
Soon as I stepped on the scene, I'm hearin hoochies screamin
Fiendin for money and alcohol
the life of a west side playa where cowards die and its all ball
Only in Cali where we riot not rally to live and die
In L.A. we wearin Chucks not Ballies (that's right)
Dressed in Locs and khaki suits and ride is what we do
Flossin but have caution we collide with other crews
Famous cause we program worldwide
Let'em recognize from Long Beach to Rosecrans
Bumpin and grindin like a slow jam, it's west side
So you know the row won't bow down to no man
Say what you say
But give me that bomb beat from Dre
Let me serenade the streets of L.A.
From Oakland to Sacktown
The Bay Area and back down
Cali is where they put they mack down
Give me love!
[rpt 1]
[dre] now make it shake...
[rpt 2]
uh, yeah, uh, longbeach in tha house, uh yeah
Oaktown, Oakland definately in tha house hahaha
Frisko, Frisko
[Tupac] hey, you know LA is up in this
Pasadena, where you at
yeah, Inglewood, Inglewood always up to no good
(Tupac) even Hollywood tryin to get a piece baby
Sacramento, sacramento where ya at? yeah
Throw it up y'all, throw it up, Throw it up
Let's show these fools how we do this on that west side
Cause you and I know it's tha best side
yeah, That's riight
west coast, west coast
uh, California Love
California Love
Wednesday, March 05, 2008
capital budgeting
Thought for the day:
Politics involved with spending the entire capital budget
Many managers try to spend their entire capital budget each year and ask for an increase for the following year. In a company with a culture of maximizing shareholder value, managers will return excess funds whenever there is a lack of positive NPV projects, and make a case for expanding the budget when there are multiple positive NPV opportunities.
So I wonder why some people never seem to get their budgeting to work efficiently. Wait what NPV? Some people in important places don't even know what NPV is or how to calculate it. Gosh!
Politics involved with spending the entire capital budget
Many managers try to spend their entire capital budget each year and ask for an increase for the following year. In a company with a culture of maximizing shareholder value, managers will return excess funds whenever there is a lack of positive NPV projects, and make a case for expanding the budget when there are multiple positive NPV opportunities.
So I wonder why some people never seem to get their budgeting to work efficiently. Wait what NPV? Some people in important places don't even know what NPV is or how to calculate it. Gosh!
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