*michael parekh on IT*

ON A HISTORIC SILK ROAD SPOT

CHANGING TIMES

One of the most memorable places I've had the opportunity to visit over the years is the ancient town of "Kashgar in the western-most regions of China.  As this New York Times article earlier this week explains:

A thousand years ago, the northern and southern branches of the Silk Road converged at this oasis town near the western edge of the Taklamakan Desert.
Traders from Delhi and Samarkand, wearied by frigid treks through the world’s most daunting mountain ranges, unloaded their pack horses here and sold saffron and lutes along the city’s cramped streets.
Chinese traders, their camels laden with silk and porcelain, did the same.
The traders are now joined by tourists exploring the donkey-cart alleys and mud-and-straw buildings once window-shopped, then sacked, by Tamerlane and Genghis Khan.

Now, Kashgar is about to be sacked again."

The piece goes on to explain how this historic town is likely to be changed forever as the central government in Beijing moves forward with it's plans to make the town's residents "earthquake proof" by essentially razing the many parts of Kashgar that make it so special for visitors and those interested in preserving history.

"Over the next few years, city officials say, they will demolish at least 85 percent of this warren of picturesque, if run-down homes and shops. Many of its 13,000 families, Muslims from a Turkic ethnic group called the Uighurs (pronounced WEE-gurs), will be moved.

In its place will rise a new Old City, a mix of midrise apartments, plazas, alleys widened into avenues and reproductions of ancient Islamic architecture “to preserve the Uighur culture,” Kashgar’s vice mayor, Xu Jianrong, said in a phone interview.

Demolition is deemed an urgent necessity because an earthquake could strike at any time, collapsing centuries-old buildings and killing thousands. “The entire Kashgar area is in a special area in danger of earthquakes,” Mr. Xu said."

Some of the motivation here at the highest levels of the Chinese government may be to control and contain some of the separatist efforts in recent years to carve out a more independent identity for the region.  The piece is worth reading in it's entirety.
The place is not very critical in the global scheme of things.  But once visited, it remains etched as a very special place in history.  Here's hoping some of Kashgar is preserved for generations to come.

ON LIGHTS GOING GREEN

SLOW AND STEADY

The New York Times has a good piece outlining the promise and challenges of LED lighting (Light Emitting Diode) to change things for the better for users and the planet.  First the promise:

"Studies suggest that a complete conversion to the lights could decrease carbon dioxide emissions from electric power use for lighting by up to 50 percent in just over 20 years; in the United States, lighting accounts for about 6 percent of all energy use. A recent report by McKinsey & Company cited conversion to LED lighting as potentially the most cost effective of a number of simple approaches to tackling global warming using existing technology..."

"LEDs are more than twice as efficient as compact fluorescent bulbs, currently the standard for greener lighting. Unlike compact fluorescents, LEDs turn on quickly and are compatible with dimmer switches. And while fluorescent bulbs contain mercury, which requires special disposal, LED bulbs contain no toxic elements, and last so long that disposal is not much of an issue."

And then some of the challenges:

"Though the United States Department of Energy calls LED “a pivotal emerging technology,” there remain significant barriers. Homeowners may balk at the high initial cost, which lighting experts say currently will take 5 to 10 years to recoup in electricity savings. An outdoor LED spotlight today costs $100, as opposed to $7 for a regular bulb.

Another issue is that current LEDs generally provide only “directional light” rather than a 360-degree glow, meaning they are better suited to downward facing streetlights and ceiling lights than to many lamp-type settings.

And in the rush to make cheaper LED lights, poorly made products could erase the technology’s natural advantage, experts warn."

The technology driving this innovation is changing rapidly, so that we may see some of these metrics change markedly for the better in the near-term.  In the meantime, LED lighting does seem to be the low-hanging fruit in going green.

ON A COOL KINDLE FEATURE

ONE SMALL STEP

I've been an avid user and fan of Amazon's Kindle book reader since the original launch, having now bought and read hundreds of books on the Kindle and the excellent Kindle for iPhone (free) software App. 
One of the big differences between reading a book on the Kindle (either generation) and the iPhone App has been the ability to highlight the content of the book and write notes in the margin as it were (can't do all that on the Kindle App...yet).
But once the notes are in the Kindle, attached to a specific book, they're kind of trapped in there.  The opportunity around making this stuff available on the web is of course a no-brainer.  Today Amazon took a baby step in this regard, as this TechCrunch piece explains:

"Amazon opened up a new feature on the Kindle: the ability to read your notes and highlights on the Web. Readers have always been able to make notes and highlight text on the Kindle itself. Now those annotations appear on your account at http://kindle.amazon.com. Once you sign in, you can see all your notes.

While this opens up all sorts of possibilities, Amazon is taking a very conservative approach. You can’t share your notes with others. You can’t even edit them in your browser.

All you can do is read them. That makes the feature little more than a Web archive of your notes and highlighted text snippets. It is a convenient feature, but why not enable sharing?

Why can’t I share an excerpt with my friends on Facebook or Twitter (with the beginning of a quote and a short link)?

Amazon needs to connect the Kindle to the rest of the Web.  Hopefully, this is the first step in that direction."

Couldn't agree more.  Hope Amazon's listening.

ON DOWNSIDES OF UNLIMITED TEXTING

TOO MUCH OF A GOOD THING

I'm always amazed at the way a young person these days seems to be able to text away at seemingly amazing speeds on the numerical keypad of an otherwise ordinary cell-phone.  And come away thinking how cool it is that they've been able to learn to do that, much as I had to learn how to type on a QWERTY keyboard at their age. 

But this cautionary piece in the New York Times about the potential downside of unlimited texting by teenagers especially, raises some other aspects of this phenomenon.  First the context:

"Spurred by the unlimited texting plans offered by carriers like AT&T Mobility and Verizon Wireless, American teenagers sent and received an average of 2,272 text messages per month in the fourth quarter of 2008, according to the Nielsen Company — almost 80 messages a day, more than double the average of a year earlier.

The phenomenon is beginning to worry physicians and psychologists, who say it is leading to anxiety, distraction in school, falling grades, repetitive stress injury and sleep deprivation."

All this may be too early to blame just on texting, as the piece goes on to emphasize,

"The rise in texting is too recent to have produced any conclusive data on health effects. But Sherry Turkle, a psychologist who is director of the Initiative on Technology and Self at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and who has studied texting among teenagers in the Boston area for three years, said it might be causing a shift in the way adolescents develop."

Another thing for teenagers to learn to do in moderation, as if the list wasn't already long enough.

ON A COOL HOT SAUCE

AGAINST ALL ODDS
Not too often does one see a full feature in the New York Times on something as prosaic as hot sauce.  Unless of course, the sauce in question happens to be Sriracha hot chili sauce, something that's been a staple for me for a long time.  For those not familiar what's special about the sauce and the company behind it, some background may be in order:

"Some American consumers believe sriracha (properly pronounced SIR-rotch-ah) to be a Thai sauce. Others think it is Vietnamese. The truth is that sriracha, as manufactured by Huy Fong Foods, may be best understood as an American sauce, a polyglot purée with roots in different places and peoples..."
"Sriracha has proved relevant beyond the epicurean realm. Wal-Mart sells the stuff.
So do mom-and-pop stores, from Bristol, Tenn., to Bisbee, Ariz. Sriracha is a key ingredient in street food: The two Kogi trucks that travel the streets of Los Angeles, vending kimchi-garnished tacos to the young, hip and hungry, provide customers with just one condiment, Huy Fong sriracha. "

Do read the article for the full flavor and history of this remarkable product, and the founder behind it.  And  of course try some if you haven't already. 
If you're already a fan, you may want to try a hot chili garlic sauce by Huy Fong that's also become a staple for me. 
One special feature of that sauce, is it's zero calories...but of course a ton of flavor and zest.

ON NEW ORIGINS

SURPRISING START
Google's "Doodle logo" was a bit of a surprise today, given that it wasn't an immediate reminder for a national holiday or event.  Clicking it, takes one to this page from the National Geographic:

"Meet "Ida," the small "missing link" found in Germany that's created a big media splash and will likely continue to make waves among those who study human origins.

In a new book, documentary, and promotional Web site, paleontologist Jorn Hurum, who led the team that analyzed the 47-million-year-old fossil seen above, suggests Ida is a critical missing-link species in primate evolution (interactive guide to human evolution from National Geographic magazine).

(Among the team members was University of Michigan paleontologist Philip Gingerich, a member of the Committee for Research and Exploration of the National Geographic Society, which owns National Geographic News.)

The fossil, he says, bridges the evolutionary split between higher primates such as monkeys, apes, and humans and their more distant relatives such as lemurs.

"This is the first link to all humans," Hurum, of the Natural History Museum in Oslo, Norway, said in a statement. Ida represents "the closest thing we can get to a direct ancestor."

Pretty cool stuff indeed, and the article goes on to provide a lot more detail on the find and it's implications.  Most surprising though was this obvious question at the very end of the piece:

"What's more, the newly described "missing link" was found in Germany's Messel Pit. Ida's European origins are intriguing, Richmond said, because they could suggest—contrary to common assumptions—that the continent was an important area for primate evolution."

It'll be interesting to see where this line of research goes, shedding light on where humans really did come from.

ON UNSTRESSFUL STRESS TESTS

PASS PASS
One of the best explanations of the recent Bank "Stress Tests" by the U.S. Treasury, comes not from a mainstream new outlet, but a mainstream TV comedy show. 
Specifically, Saturday Night Live hits it out of the park with it's take and analysis of these stress tests.  Check it out here, and see what you think:
Now CNNMoney took a similar approach with it's story on the stress tests titled "Bank Stress Tests:  Everybody gets an A!". 
But somehow SNL's take doesn't make one cry as much.

ON POLITICS OF CAP & TRADE

HORSE TRADING

This New York Times piece asks some timely questions about one of the most popular tools in the government's tool chest to address global warming:

"How did cap and trade, hatched as an academic theory in obscure economic journals half a century ago, become the policy of choice in the debate over how to slow the heating of the planet? And how did it come to eclipse the idea of simply slapping a tax on energy consumption that befouls the public square or leaves the nation hostage to foreign oil producers?"

And goes on to provide a not too surprising answer:

"The answer is not to be found in the study of economics or environmental science, but in the realm where most policy debates are ultimately settled: politics.

Many members of Congress remember the painful political lesson of 1993, when President Bill Clinton proposed a tax on all forms of energy, a plan that went down to defeat and helped take the Democratic majority in Congress down with it a year later.

Cap and trade, by contrast, is almost perfectly designed for the buying and selling of political support through the granting of valuable emissions permits to favor specific industries and even specific Congressional districts. That is precisely what is taking place now in the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which has used such concessions to patch together a Democratic majority to pass a far-reaching bill to regulate carbon emissions through a cap-and-trade plan.

The bill is poised to win committee approval this week, although with virtually no support from Republicans."

Ironic since the whole thing really got going in a Republican administration:

"If there was a single moment when cap and trade crossed the threshold from relatively untested economic concept to prevailing government policy, it came in May 1989 in the West Wing office of C. Boyden Gray, counsel to President George H. W. Bush."

The piece makes for compelling reading on the unintended consequences of some initially far-fetched ideas.  Especially since it looks like it'll be even more of a reality for all of us in not too long.

* Image source.

ON ANECDOTES OF A TRADE WAR

IT'S BEGUN
One of the scariest headlines of the week has nothing to do with unrest in a nuclear Pakistan, rising challenges for the U.S. in Afghanistan, or increasing violence in Iraq.  Instead, it's this story in the Washington Post, titled "Trade Wars launched with ruses, end runs", indicating that the global race to the bottom in a back-door trade war may have begun:

"Is this what the first trade war of the global economic crisis looks like?

Ordered by Congress to "buy American" when spending money from the $787 billion stimulus package, the town of Peru, Ind., stunned its Canadian supplier by rejecting sewage pumps made outside of Toronto. After a Navy official spotted Canadian pipe fittings in a construction project at Camp Pendleton, Calif., they were hauled out of the ground and replaced with American versions. In recent weeks, other Canadian manufacturers doing business with U.S. state and local governments say they have been besieged with requests to sign affidavits pledging that they will only supply materials made in the USA.

Outrage spread in Canada, with the Toronto Star last week bemoaning "a plague of protectionist measures in the U.S." and Canadian companies openly fretting about having to shift jobs to the United States to meet made-in-the-USA requirements. This week, the Canadians fired back. A number of Ontario towns, with a collective population of nearly 500,000, retaliated with measures effectively barring U.S. companies from their municipal contracts -- the first shot in a larger campaign that could shut U.S. companies out of billions of dollars worth of Canadian projects."

The piece goes on to tell tales of unintended consequences unleashed by the politics of government bank bailouts across the world:

"The United States is not alone in throwing up domestic policies assailed by critics as protectionist. Britain and the Netherlands, for instance, are forcing banks receiving taxpayer bailouts to jump-start lending at home at the expense of overseas clients. French President Nicolas Sarkozy initially insisted that his nation's automakers move manufacturing jobs home in exchange for a government bailout, but backed down after outrage surged among his peers in the European Union, of which France is a central member."

These trends seem to be accelerating, at least in an anecdotal form.  It shouldn't be too long before we see the consequences of our best intentions in national and international economic statistics start to pile up.

ON DEALING WITH STAR TREK

EMPIRE STRIKES BACK

With the new Star Trek movie in theaters this weekend, it was inevitable that Star Wars fans would get their  dander up. 

Looks like they're getting their revenge in this little bit as Wired Magazine explains:

"Stormtroopers celebrate after the Death Star vaporizes the Enterprise in the clip...

Mike Horn’s fan footage pits the two high-tech war machines against each other in the sci-fi franchise faceoff. As with his 2008 masterpiece “Death Star Over San Francisco,” the reel above was probably made on Horn’s computer using nothing more than After Effects, Final Cut and his fertile imagination. And an obvious preference for Star Wars over Star Trek."

It all makes sense in this Aliens vs. Predators world. 

Happy Mother's Day all.