*michael parekh on IT*

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 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.

ON OVER-HYPING "PANDEMIC"

EAGER COVERAGE

We seem to be moving to the next stage in the morphing of the global Swine Flu crisis, as this Wall Street Journal piece describes:

"The United Nations public health agency raised its global pandemic alert level on Monday to "phase 4" from "phase 3," recognizing that the A/H1N1 virus is spreading from person to person and urging countries to prepare for a pandemic. Moving it up one notch, to "phase 5," would indicate that the virus is causing multiple outbreaks, or widespread human infection.

With multiple outbreaks in Mexico and human transmission now occurring in New York City, where people at a school in Queens were infected after some students traveled to Mexico, the disease has moved closer to that definition, Dr. Fukuda said."

As always in these types of situations, the mainstream media is almost ahead of the evolving reality, with almost every other report having the word "Pandemic" in it in one form or another.  This Business & Media Institute piece is on point:

“Are we on the verge of a swine flu pandemic?” That was a question asked by Larry King for CNN on April 27, but also by many Americans since April 24 as the number of confirmed cases around the world grew.

NBC’s Robert Bazell said the government didn’t “want people to panic,” but then panicked viewers saying “it appears to be an outbreak unlike anything we’ve seen in our lifetimes.”

That scary, hyped tone reflected how many in the media covered the swine flu. Some media outlets hyped the threat with nearly constant coverage, worst-case scenarios or comparisons to the 1918 Spanish flu, while many others missed crucial points of the swine flu story, including the former president’s work to prepare in case of a pandemic flu and the issue of border security with Mexico."

Some in the media are taking note of this heightened focus on "pandemic", as the article goes on to describe:

"Fox News Channel’s Brit Hume and media critic Howard Kurtz both criticized the national news media for portraying the outbreak as “a full-blown crisis.” Hume called it “much ado about – I’m afraid to say this – not very much.” Kurtz particularly noted the “front-page headlines, constant cable-news updates and top-story status on the evening newscasts.”

Though most media accounts were less hyperbolic than NBC and AP’s, the word pandemic cropped up in fifteen stories on the three networks in four days (April 25-28). During that same time, CNN used “pandemic” in 51 stories and Fox News Channel in 10 stories according to Nexis."

It's too much to ask of course, but it'd really be something if the media for once tried to keep pace with this story, rather than gallop way ahead of it.

In the meantime, for a more balanced perspective on the situation, check out this piece by Dr. Mercola on the Mercola medical site.

ON ANOTHER SIDE OF DUBAI

STRETCHING LIMITS

The Independent has a long but sobering piece on the reality of Dubai titled "The Dark Side of Dubai", covering both the recent boom and the current bust.  Some searing excerpts:

"Once the manic burst of building has stopped and the whirlwind has slowed, the secrets of Dubai are slowly seeping out. This is a city built from nothing in just a few wild decades on credit and ecocide, suppression and slavery. Dubai is a living metal metaphor for the neo-liberal globalised world that may be crashing – at last – into history..."
"...There are three different Dubais, all swirling around each other. There are the expats, like Karen; there are the Emiratis, headed by Sheikh Mohammed; and then there is the foreign underclass who built the city, and are trapped here. They are hidden in plain view. You see them everywhere, in dirt-caked blue uniforms, being shouted at by their superiors, like a chain gang – but you are trained not to look..."
"I approach a blonde 17-year-old Dutch girl wandering around in hotpants, oblivious to the swarms of men gaping at her. "I love it here!" she says. "The heat, the malls, the beach!" Does it ever bother you that it's a slave society? She puts her head down, just as Sohinal did. "I try not to see," she says. Even at 17, she has learned not to look, and not to ask; that, she senses, is a transgression too far..."
"...Dubai is not just a city living beyond its financial means; it is living beyond its ecological means. You stand on a manicured Dubai lawn and watch the sprinklers spray water all around you. You see tourists flocking to swim with dolphins. You wander into a mountain-sized freezer where they have built a ski slope with real snow. And a voice at the back of your head squeaks: this is the desert. This is the most water-stressed place on the planet. How can this be happening? How is it possible?

"...Sheikh Maktoum built his showcase city in a place with no useable water. None. There is no surface water, very little acquifer, and among the lowest rainfall in the world. So Dubai drinks the sea. The Emirates' water is stripped of salt in vast desalination plants around the Gulf – making it the most expensive water on earth. It costs more than petrol to produce, and belches vast amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as it goes. It's the main reason why a resident of Dubai has the biggest average carbon footprint of any human being – more than double that of an American..."

"...Dubai had expanded so fast its sewage treatment facilities couldn't keep up. The sewage disposal trucks had to queue for three or four days at the treatment plants – so instead, they were simply drilling open the manholes and dumping the untreated sewage down them, so it flowed straight to the sea."

The whole piece is worth reading, along with the many vocal comments from many residents who take issue with many aspects of the article.

ON A FAILURE TO COMMUNICATE

NOT AGAIN

(Updates below)

By now the brouhaha over this morning's "Photo-op" flyover of lower Manhattan by the backup Air Force One and some F-16s, is old news.  For those not familiar with the event, here's a good summary:

"An Air Force One lookalike, the backup plane for the one regularly used by the president, flew low over parts of New York and New Jersey on Monday morning, accompanied by two F-16 fighters, so Air Force photographers could take pictures high above the New York harbor.

But the exercise — conducted without any notification to the public — caused momentary panic in some quarters and led to the evacuation of several buildings in Lower Manhattan and Jersey City. By the afternoon, the situation had turned into a political fuse box, with Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg saying that he was “furious” that he had not been told in advance about the flyover.

At 4:39 p.m. Monday, the White House issued an apology for the flyover. Louis E. Caldera, director of the White House Military Office, who served in the Clinton administration as secretary of the Army, said in a statement:

Last week, I approved a mission over New York. I take responsibility for that decision. While federal authorities took the proper steps to notify state and local authorities in New York and New Jersey, it’s clear that the mission created confusion and disruption. I apologize and take responsibility for any distress that flight caused.

The flyover, which began around 10 a.m., resulted in widespread confusion and a flood of calls to emergency hot lines. Perplexed officials at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and other authorities were inundated with calls from anxious ferry passengers, office workers and residents."

The plane apparently flew pretty low, by some accounts as low as 500 feet, over several prominent buildings:

"In Jersey City, construction workers were evacuated from a condominium tower under construction at 77 Hudson Street. The workers, who were on the 32nd floor of the construction site, said the plane circled three times past the Goldman Sachs tower, the tallest building in New Jersey. On the second pass, they said, the jet appeared to be only a few dozen feet from the building — close enough to clip the side of the skyscraper. A fighter followed right behind, mirroring its moves. "

Here's what it looked and sounded like from the ground:

Several questions obviously still remain unanswered (Updated):
1.  What exactly was this "photo-op", and why was it so important to be done in this manner?

    This report from CBS explains:

    "The flyover -- apparently ordered by the White House Office of Military Affairs so it would have souvenir photos of Air Force One with the Statue of Liberty in the background..."

2.  Why use the backup to AirForce One, one very customized Boeing 747 that's obviously pretty expensive to operate?

This Bloomberg report puts the cost at a touch over $328,000.  This while leading members from both the Executive and Legislative branch has gone out of it's way to castigate private businesses that have received federal "bailout" loans for private jet travel and off-site business meetings.

3.  If those who orchestrated this event thought they had done all the communicating with various authorities, what did they think would happen when these planes flew over lower Manhattan on a Monday morning?
4.  Did they think eight years is long enough for people not to be spooked by something like this?
Hope we get some answers to these and other questions soon.

ON GOD MAKING A COMEBACK

BIGGER THAN EVER

"God is Back" has got to be one of the best titles ever for a new book.  The review of the book by the New York Times promises more between the covers as well:

"Not all that long ago, the great minds of Europe predicted a future with little or no religion. Science would make us highly skeptical of miracles. Psychiatry would direct all of our awe and wonder inward. Changing roles for women would weaken the patriarchal structure that props up clerics. Whatever script for modernity one followed, it had God playing a bit role.

As we all know, it didn’t happen that way. Modernity arrived and improvised new starring roles for God. The Americans led the way by becoming both “the quintessentially modern country” and a very devout one, John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge write in their new book, “God Is Back,” and most of the world has followed that model.

In rich countries and poorer ones, democratic and undemocratic, primarily Islamic and primarily Christian — everywhere, basically, except Europe — devotion to God has remained surprisingly robust.

“The very things that were supposed to destroy religion — democracy and markets, technology and reason — are combining to make it stronger,” write Mickle­thwait, editor in chief of The Economist, and Wooldridge, the magazine’s Washington bureau chief, who together have written previous books about globalization and American conservatism, two ­similarly sweeping topics."

Here's the bit that surprised me from the review:

"While fundamentalists of all kinds get most of the attention, the authors zero in on another phenomenon: the growth and global spread of the American megachurch. With no state-sanctioned religion, American churches began to operate like multinational corporations; pastors became “pastorpreneurs,” endlessly branding and expanding, treating the flock like customers and seeding franchises all over the world. The surge of religion was “driven by the same forces driving the success of market capitalism: competition and choice.”

Definitely a side of religious expansion that's not been in the mainstream view.  Just added "God is Back" to my Kindle reading list.

ON A FOCUS ON ASIA

NEW BEGINNINGS

The Economist introduces a new column on Asia this week in an article titled "In the Shade of the Banyan Tree", with this background:

"SOME 165 years, 161 years and 114 years since its correspondents first filed reports respectively from Calcutta, Shanghai and Yokohama, The Economist this week launches a column on Asian affairs. We have taken a while, but is this not, after all, to be the Asian century? We think probably so..."

"the search for an Asian identity is growing. It forms the backdrop to the annual East Asia Summit, held this year in Thailand from April 10th, grouping the ten South-East Asian countries with not just their partners in China, Japan and South Korea but India, Australia and New Zealand as well. The powerful impulse for co-operation is materialism based on rapid economic development..."

Looks like the Economist will have a lot of material to work with for the new column.

Why the Banyan Tree? The piece goes on to explain:

"A dearth of pan-Asian images speaks volumes, but the banyan tree serves better than most, for it or similar trees are found somewhere in most Asian countries. The banyan spans Asia’s spirituality and its entrepreneurialism. The Bodhi tree, under which Buddha attained enlightenment, was a banyan by another name. Gujarati merchants conducted business under it, and the Portuguese lent their name, banyan, to the tree. It stuck."

"...An ancient connection exists between public business and the banyan tree, as between its huge overarching shade and its deep intertwining roots. In South-East Asia, and Java in particular, the shade was a place of learning and a site where rulers vowed justice. Those are Asian values to which Banyan will happily subscribe." 

As an Indian born kid, I remember going through a phase of sketching one Banyan tree after another.

So it seems appropriate as a title for this new experiment.  Here's to reading much more about Asia underneath this Banyan Tree.

ON MONSTROUS CHUTZPAH

STRETCHING IT

I've been a customer and fan of Monster Cable products since the 1980s, and so this article by the Wall Street Journal titled "The scariest Monster of  all sues for trademark infringement"  caught my attention:

"When Christina and Patrick Vitagliano dreamed up their Monster Mini Golf franchises -- 18-hole, indoor putting greens straddled by glow-in-the-dark statues of ghouls and gargoyles -- they never imagined that a California maker of high-end audio cables would object.

But Monster Cable Products Inc., which holds more than 70 trademarks on the word monster, challenged the Vitaglianos' trademark applications. It filed a federal lawsuit against their company in California and demanded the Rhode Island couple surrender the name and pay at least $80,000 for the right to use it."

The piece goes on to add:

"Over the years, it has gone after purveyors of monster-branded auto transmissions, slot machines, glue, carpet-cleaning machines and an energy drink, as well as a woman who sells "Junk Food Monster" kids' T-shirts that promote good eating habits.

It sued Monster.com over the job-hunting Web site's name and Walt Disney Co. over products tied to the film "Monsters Inc." It opposed the Boston Red Sox trademark applications for seats and hot dogs named for the Green Monster, the legendary left-field wall in Fenway Park. All in all, Monster Cable says it has fought about 190 monster battles at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and filed around 30 monster lawsuits in federal courts."

The company founder and CEO, Noel Lee, who founded the company in 1979 and carries the title "Head Monster", has been aggressive on this front to say the least:

"To a legal novice, it may seem odd that a common word like monster can be trademarked at all. But in the complex and sometimes murky world of trademark law, common words can be registered, provided they are associated with specific classes of goods. Apple Inc., for example, holds trademarks for the word apple when it's related to computer products, not fruit.

Sometimes, trademarks can obtain a higher order of protection, known as "famous marks." This category is supposed to be reserved for words that have become so entwined with a product and a company -- like the word visa and Visa Inc.'s credit card -- that the trademark owner can argue that no other product may use the word in its name.

David Tognotti, Monster Cable's general manager and an attorney, says the company considers "Monster" a famous mark -- on a par with Barbie dolls or Camel cigarettes. "We're protecting our mark as if it's a famous mark," he said in an interview in Monster Cable's headquarters, where the walls are lined with framed copies of the company's trademarks and patents.

Mr. Tognotti cited a chapter on famous marks in the law book "McCarthy on Trademarks and Unfair Competition" by J. Thomas McCarthy, a noted expert in the field.

But in an interview, Prof. McCarthy expressed doubt that Monster Cable possesses a famous mark. He said such determinations are made by courts. Mr. Tognotti acknowledges Monster Cable hasn't obtained such a court ruling."

It's perfectly reasonable for businesses to be aggressive about protecting their assets and business interests.  But this one seems to step over the line a tad, as this one piece of many found on the web indicate.  It might even be considered "Evil" by some estimates. 

Know this won't mean anything to a company with half a billion in revenues but I think I'm holding off buying Monster Cable products for now.

* Image source.

ON COMEDY AND NEWS

PROJECT RATINGS

It's April Fool's Day and so time again to take everything we encounter today with an extra grain of salt.  But it's  hard to be impressed by pranks these days when it seems almost everyone we watch on TV is pulling one almost every day.  Steven Colbert of the Comedy Channel highlights one such "prank" by Fox personality Glenn Beck around his project 9/12, in a hilarious bit on his show:

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
The 10/31 Project
comedycentral.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor NASA Name Contest

It's all good fun, but Glenn Beck may be having the last laugh.  His approach seems to have garnered him strong ratings a scant two months out from his new perch at Fox.

ON THE END OF AN ERA...AGAIN

CHAIN REACTIONS

End of an era, this bit of news from Microsoft:

"Microsoft's years-long-running multimedia CD-based encyclopedia product, Encarta, will be history by the end of the year. According to Ars Technica, Microsoft quietly announced the discontinuation date for Encarta to be October 31, 2009. Although the MSN press release doesn't go into too much detail on all the reasons why this decision was made, (nothing about Wikipedia for example), they do mention that the way people look for and consume information has changed substantially in the last few years, which seems like a fair assessment.

It appears that all Encarta properties will be phased out over the coming year. They will stop selling the retail and student versions by June and the online MSN Explorer content will be removed by the end of October. Customers paying for a subscription to Encarta Premium will receive a pro-rated refund around the middle of the year. Technical support, like with most other Microsoft products, will continue for three years after the official end of life.

As we mentioned, although Microsoft doesn't directly implicate Wikipedia as one of the harbingers of their decision to kill Encarta, we can only assume that it is a big part of that decision. Although Encarta's content was carefully curated, and of course factually accurate (which is often more than what you can say about Wikipedia), apparently the cost and availability of instant sources of information online has overcome the appeal of this once-novel encyclopedia."

It's a bit ironic though, since not too long ago, the world of encylopedias almost saw the end of another era, as this piece from Capitalism Magazine recalls from 2000:

"In 1768, three Scottish printers began publishing an integrated compendium of knowledge -- the earliest and most famous encyclopedia in the English-speaking world. They called it Encyclopedia Britannica. Since then, Britannica has evolved through fifteen editions, and to this day it is generally regarded as the world's most comprehensive and authoritative encyclopedia.

In 1920, Sears, Roebuck and Company, an American mail-order retailer, acquired Britannica and moved its headquarters from Edinburgh to Chicago..."

"By 1990, sales of Britannica's multivolume sets had reached an all-time peak of about $650 million. Dominant market share, steady if unspectacular growth, generous margins, and a two-hundred-year history all testified to an extraordinarily compelling and stable brand. Since 1990, however, sales of Britannica, and of all printed encyclopedias in the United States, have collapsed by over 80 percent. Britannica was blown away by a product of the late-twentieth-century information revolution: the CD-ROM.

The CD-ROM came from nowhere and destroyed the printed encyclopedia business. Whereas Britannica sells for $1,500 to $2,200 per set (depending on the quality of the binding), CD-ROM encyclopedias, such as Encarta, Grolier, and Compton, list for $50 to $70. But hardly anybody pays even that: the vast majority of copies are given away to promote the sale of computers and peripherals. With a marginal manufacturing cost of $1.50 per copy, the CD-ROM as freebie makes good economic sense. The marginal cost of Britannica, in contrast, is about $250 for production plus about $500 to $600 for the salesperson's commission."

So what the CD-ROM did to print encylopedias, the web did to CD-ROM tomes of knowledge.  At each juncture, the business models that ruled rapidly disintegrated, and new ones took their place...or not.