November 2013 – artdiamondblog.com

Google Surprised at Success of Chinese Cyberattack

(p. 268) Though the underlying issue of Google’s China pullout was censorship, it was ironic that a cyberattack had triggered the retreat. Google had believed that its computer science skills and savvy made it a leader in protecting its corporate information. With its blend of Montessori naiveté and hubris that had served it so well in other areas, the company felt it could do security better. Until the China incursion, it appeared to be succeeding.

Source:
Levy, Steven. In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011.
(Note: italics in original.)

Kerosene Creatively Destroyed Whale Oil

“The whale-oil lamps at the Sag Harbor Whaling and Historical Museum are obsolete, though at one time, whale oil lighted much of the Western world.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. 20) Like oil, particularly in its early days, whaling spawned dazzling fortunes, depending on the brute labor of tens of thousands of men doing dirty, sweaty, dangerous work. Like oil, it began with the prizes closest to home and then found itself exploring every corner of the globe. And like oil, whaling at its peak seemed impregnable, its product so far superior to its trifling rivals, like smelly lard oil or volatile camphene, that whaling interests mocked their competitors.

“Great noise is made by many of the newspapers and thousands of the traders in the country about lard oil, chemical oil, camphene oil, and a half-dozen other luminous humbugs,” The Nantucket Inquirer snorted derisively in 1843. It went on: “But let not our envious and — in view of the lard oil mania — we had well nigh said, hog-gish opponents, indulge themselves in any such dreams.”
But, in fact, whaling was already just about done, said Eric Jay Dolin, who . . . is the author of “Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America.” Whales near North America were becoming scarce, and the birth of the American petroleum industry in 1859 in Titusville, Pa., allowed kerosene to supplant whale oil before the electric light replaced both of them and oil found other uses.
. . .
Mr. Dolin said the message for today was that one era’s irreplaceable energy source could be the next one’s relic. Like whaling, he said, big oil is ripe to be replaced by something newer, cleaner, more appropriate for its moment.

For the full story, see:
PETER APPLEBOME. “OUR TOWNS; Once They Thought Whale Oil Was Indispensable, Too.” The New York Times, First Section (Sun., August 3, 2008): 20.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the title, “OUR TOWNS; They Used to Say Whale Oil Was Indispensable, Too.”)

Dolin’s book is:
Dolin, Eric Jay. Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2007.

Beer Was Safer than Water

(p. C24) . . . what would beer be without water? . . . New York City, at least until the opening of the Croton Aqueduct in 1842, had no clean, reliable source. In fact, since hops have a preservative quality, and brewing requires boiling, “beer was once considered safer to drink than water.”

For the full review, see:
EDWARD ROTHSTEIN. “EXHIBITION REVIEW; A Tipple or Two? It Was Safer Than Water.” The New York Times (Fri., May 25, 2012): C19 & C24.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date May 24, 2012.)

Former Botswana President Won Prize for Ceding Power

“Festus G. Mogae, trained as an economist, was Botswana’s president for two terms.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. A10) JOHANNESBURG — A foundation dedicated to celebrating and encouraging good government in Africa awarded its annual prize on Monday to Botswana’s former president, Festus G. Mogae. He was honored for consolidating his nation’s democracy, ensuring that its diamond wealth enriched its people and providing bold leadership during the AIDS pandemic.

Mr. Mogae, 69, a man with a modest style, will receive $5 million over the next 10 years and $200,000 per year thereafter for the rest of his life. Over the coming decade, the foundation may also grant another $200,000 a year to causes of Mr. Mogae’s choice.
The award, the Mo Ibrahim Prize for Achievement in African Leadership, is bestowed by the Mo Ibrahim Foundation, named after its founder, a Sudanese billionaire.

For the full story, see:
CELIA W. DUGGER. “Botswana’s Ex-President Wins Leadership Prize.” The New York Times (Tues., October 21, 2008): A10.
(Note: the online version of the story has the date October 20, 2008.)

Nebraska Teenager Becomes the “George Clooney of YouTube”

(p. 263) Google also became more aggressive in connecting sponsors for popular videos. A paragon of YouTube’s business model was “Fred,” a video channel created by a Columbus, Nebraska, teenager named Lucas Cruikshank. The teen pretended to be a six-year-old kid named Fred Figglehorn in a series of two-minute videos. “Fred is the George Clooney of YouTube,” says Hunter Walk. “He was the first one with a million subscribers. He uploads videos, and we put ads against them. Sometimes he sells product placement ads. Fred makes a million dollars a year. He just signed a movie deal.” The Fred videos– generally manic rants in which Cruikshank portrays a hyperactive, possibly brain-damaged child who speaks like one of Ross Bagdasarian’s chipmunks– often sported commercial messages for sponsors such as Samsung, the Food Channel, and Bratz on an overlay at the bottom of the window. Since he started in 2008, at age fourteen, Fred’s (p. 264) YouTube videos have chalked up over half a billion viewings. Though Fred’s success was solely a product of YouTube, people in the company never met the phenom. “We sent him a cake once,” says Walk.
YouTube helped Fred’s youthful creator not just by selling ads but by providing analytics, the same way it did for AdSense publishers. (This was a result of an initiative called the YouTube Insight project, developed by engineers in Google’s Zurich center.) Such data helped creators learn what was working and where. “They’re like, ‘Oh my God, I’m big in the U.K.! I never knew I had a London following!'” says Walk. Superusers such as Cruikshank were so successful in exploiting YouTube’s business initiatives that corporations such as Sony were studying their methodology and even paid some of them consultant fees to help them understand the digital world.

Source:
Levy, Steven. In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011.

Malcolm Gladwell Has High Praise for Michael Lewis

“Malcolm Gladwell” Source of caption and image: online version of the NYT interview quoted and cited below.

I have found the two books that I have read by Michael Lewis to be very useful. But I have found the five books that I have read by Malcolm Gladwell to be full of wonderful and important examples and thought-provoking insights. So I am a bit surprised by the level of Gladwell’s praise for Lewis. (Maybe the problem is that I have not yet read Moneyball or The Blind Side.)

(p. 8) What books, to your mind, bring together social science, business principles and narrative nonfiction in an interesting or innovative way?
. . . Bringing together social science and business principles is easy. Doing that and telling a compelling story is next to impossible. I think only Michael Lewis can do it well. His nonbusiness books like “The Blind Side,” by the way, are even better. That book is as close to perfect as a work of popular nonfiction can be.

For the full interview, see:
“By the Book; Malcolm Gladwell; The author of “David and Goliath” compares Michael Lewis to Tiger Woods: “I’ll never play like that. But it’s good to be reminded every now and again what genius looks like.” The New York Times Book Review (Sun., October 6, 2013): 8.
(Note: bold in original; ellipsis added.)
(Note: neither the print nor the online version of the interview identify the name of the interviewer.)
(Note: the online version of the interview has the date October 3, 2013, and has the title “Malcolm Gladwell: By the Book; The author of “David and Goliath” compares Michael Lewis to Tiger Woods: “I’ll never play like that. But it’s good to be reminded every now and again what genius looks like.”)

Fed Regulations Are “a Wild Card” Since “Regulators Have a Lot of Leeway”

(p. 1D) The president of First National of Nebraska, the nation’s largest privately held banking firm, said new federal regulatory and compliance efforts stand to cost the company as much as $30 million this year.
“It is a big uncertainty in the banking world,” said Dan O’Neill, speaking Wednesday at the company’s annual meeting in Omaha. “They are not operating off of concrete rules. A lot of it is their interpretation.”
The federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was formed as a result of the federal Dodd-Frank laws passed in 2010 after widespread bank failures and bailouts using taxpayer money.
. . .
The bureau, he said, worries banks because there is not a “clear body of rules” from which the regulator is operating in evaluating the fairness of a bank’s business practices. He said the agency’s regulators have a lot of leeway in deciding what to do af-(p. 2D)ter examining a bank; penalties for running afoul include fines.
“So it is a bit of a wild card,” he said.

For the full story, see:
RUSSELL HUBBARD. “ANNUAL MEETING; First National Chief Says Regulatory Costs Mounting.” Omaha World-Herald (Thurs., June 20, 2013): 1D-2D.
(Note: ellipsis added.)

“Engrossing, Brain-Tickling” Refutation of Al Gore’s Global Warming Assertions

“The Danish economist Bjorn Lomborg in “Cool It,” a documentary based on his book.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT review quoted and cited below.

(p. C8) Debunking claims made by “An Inconvenient Truth” and presenting alternative strategies, “Cool It” finally blossoms into an engrossing, brain-tickling picture as many of Al Gore’s meticulously graphed assertions are systematically — and persuasively — refuted. (I was intrigued to hear Mr. Lomborg say, for instance, that the polar-bear population is more endangered by hunters than melting ice.)
. . .
. . . “Cool It” is all about the pep: playing down the talking heads and playing up the “git ‘er done.” If algae can suck up carbon dioxide and spit out oil, what on earth are we worrying about?

For the full review, see:
JEANNETTE CATSOULIS. “Global Warming and Common Sense.” The New York Times (Fri., November 12, 2010): C8.
(Note: the online version of the review has the date November 11, 2010.)

The documentary is based on the book:
Lomborg, Bjørn. Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist’s Guide to Global Warming. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007.

Pretentious Studios Were Pushed Aside by Grounded Googlers

(p. 261) Kamangar didn’t put a value judgment on the way the labels and studios worked but tried to crack their code, talking to executives, producers, agents, and managers. One day he happened to be in New York and was invited to meet with the CEO of Universal Music Group, Doug Morris. Kamangar was escorted by bodyguards to a private elevator and ushered to a fancy office high above the city. He couldn’t help thinking of the contrast with Google, where you stumbled in and went to the microkitchen for coffee. Kamangar didn’t dwell on the (p. 262) irony that it was the scruffy kids in shorts, munching energy bars and writing analytics programs, who were pushing aside the old power structure. While he put the pieces of YouTube together, though, he always kept in mind that he was documenting a traditional media system on the verge of collapse. He had to deal with the music world as it was but also plan for the way it would be after disruptions, which Google and YouTube were accelerating.

Source:
Levy, Steven. In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011.

After Humans, Earth Would Quickly Revert to Its Pre-Human Condition

Source of book image: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/88/The_World_Without_Us_(US_cover).jpg

When I saw the mention of this book, quoted below, I thought it must be closely related to the 2008 History Channel program “Life Without Us” that I liked very much. Apparently the two overlap on the message that a post-human planet Earth would quickly return to its pre-human condition, but they differ in that the program does not share the book’s anti-technology leitmotif.
The main take-away from the program, for me, was that environmentalists worry too much about the long-term damage that humans can do to the planet—for the most part, the planet is pretty resilient and can quickly return itself to something close to its pre-human condition.

(p. C10) Mr. Weisman’s 2007 book, “The World Without Us,” was a surprise best seller that imagined what would happen to the planet were all humans to suddenly disappear. Turns out that nature would in short order erase pretty much everything we’ve done.

Source:
MICHAEL SHERMER. “Menace to the Planet?” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., Oct. 5, 2013): C10.
(Note: the online version of the review has the date Oct. 4, 2013, and has the title “BOOKSHELF; Book Review: ‘Ten Billion’ by Stephen Emmott | ‘Countdown’ by Alan Weisman; While some worry a booming population doom the planet, in many Western countries there is now a birth dearth.”)

The book mentioned is:
Weisman, Alan. The World without Us. New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2007.

Companies Do Less R&D in Countries that Steal Intellectual Property

The conclusions of Gupta and Wang, quoted below, are consistent with research done many years ago by economist Edwin Mansfield.

(p. A15) China’s indigenous innovation program, launched in 2006, has alarmed the world’s technology giants more than any other policy measure since the start of economic reforms in 1978. A recent report from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce even went so far as to call this program “a blueprint for technology theft on a scale the world has not seen before.”
. . .
A comparison with India is illustrative. India has no equivalent to indigenous innovation rules. The government also is content to allow companies to set up R&D facilities without any rules about sharing technology with local partners or the like.
These policy differences appear to have a significant influence on corporate behavior. Consider the top 10 U.S.-based technology giants that received the most patents from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) between 2006 and 2010: IBM, Microsoft, Intel, Hewlett-Packard, Micron, GE, Cisco, Texas Instruments, Broadcom and Honeywell.
Half of these companies appear not to be doing any significant R&D work in China. Between 2006 and 2010, the U.S. PTO did not award a single patent to any China-based units of five out of the 10 companies. In contrast, only one of the 10 did not receive a patent for an innovation developed in India.

For the full commentary, see:
Anil K. Gupta and Haiyan Wang. “How Beijing Is Stifling Chinese Innovation.” The Wall Street Journal (Thurs., September 1, 2011): A15.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the title “Beijing Is Stifling Chinese Innovation.”)

Mansfield’s relevant paper is:
Mansfield, Edwin. “Unauthorized Use of Intellectual Property: Effects on Investment, Technology Transfer, and Innovation.” In Global Dimensions of Intellectual Property Rights in Science and Technology, edited by M. E. Mogee M. B. Wallerstein, and R. A. Schoen. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1993, pp. 107-45.

Mansfield’s research on this issue is discussed on pp. 1611-1612 of:
Diamond, Arthur M., Jr. “Edwin Mansfield’s Contributions to the Economics of Technology.” Research Policy 32, no. 9 (Oct. 2003): 1607-17.