Not A Mystery

Talk about being “in the zone”.

The final episode of Mad Men (Season 1) shows Don Draper coining the word Carousel for the gizmo that holds the slides on Kodak’s slide projector. And creating the Kodak Moment campaign to sell memories instead of hardware.

Which got me thinking about what could top this bit of genius marketing.

It would have to be getting people to pay for something they don’t use.

Two examples come to mind: Propane and Cellphone Plans.

I was at a friends home the other night and he was using his BBQ. I noticed that he had one of those recycleable propane tanks that you return when it gets low and exchange it for a new, filled up, tank. I hadn’t thought about that product before because I take my propane tank to a local station where they just top up my own tank when it gets low.

A little thought will reveal the brillance of the recycleable tank, which is that you are always paying for propane you don’t use. Since nobody can take the chance that they will run out of propane in the middle of their BBQ, that tank gets returned long before it’s empty. In my own case I only pay for the propane that actually ‘tops up’ my tank.

OK, that’s a bit of a rip-off, but we’re not talking big bucks and it’s hard to get mad at the guys who sell propane.

Cellphone Carriers are another story altogether. We hate these guys before the opening credits even come up.

They do the same thing as the propane guys, but it happens with bigger bucks and it’s every month. Plus, did I mention their service sucks.

When you sign up for a cellphone ‘plan’ you have to pick your ‘number of minutes’. Same idea, pay for something you don’t use. Because they charge confiscatory prices if you go over your limit, you are forced to buy more minutes than you think you might ever use.

And in the immortal words of Adam Carolla, ‘They don’t even give you a reach-around’.

Turns out a Verizon Moment is one of those minutes you pay for, but don’t use.

Don Draper would be in awe.

Full disclosure right off the bat: I’m a total Google Fan-Boy, even though in my case the term “boy” stopped being appropriate over 50 years ago.

Nevertheless.

I’ve talked before about how Google changed my life, and the life of virtually everyone else on this planet, by ‘organizing the world’s information’ and making it available. But when you have huge changes you also have large unintended consequences.

One of those is the fact of too much information (about ourselves) becoming publicly available. If you have more of your life behind you than ahead of you it’s not as bad as if you have most of your life still to come.

Eric Schmidt, CEO And Resident Adult At Google

So at first blush, Eric Schmidt’s offhand prediction last week seemed a stroke of brilliance.

He predicts, apparently seriously, that every young person one day will be entitled automatically to change his or her name on reaching adulthood in order to disown youthful hijinks stored on their friends’ social media sites.

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It’s a nice try Eric, but this genie’s already out of the bottle.

Way out.

To me it sounds like Schmidt’s got some bright anthropologists on retainer and is proposing that some sort of digital walkabout for our young people will make the problem go away. But the real point is that this is an issue for everyone, not just our kids.

Spend a few minutes actually thinking about his idea and you quickly come to realize how out of control things have become for most normal (non-geek) people. This new reality can be good or bad, depending on your perspective.

“I actually think most people don’t want Google to answer their questions,” he elaborates. “They want Google to tell them what they should be doing next.”

Let’s say you’re walking down the street. Because of the info Google has collected about you, “we know roughly who you are, roughly what you care about, roughly who your friends are.” Google also knows, to within a foot, where you are … If you need milk and there’s a place nearby to get milk, Google will remind you to get milk. It will tell you a store ahead has a collection of horse-racing posters, that a 19th-century murder you’ve been reading about took place on the next block.

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Meanwhile, our future is undoubtedly known to those same anthropologists whispering in Schmidt’s ear.  It’s that we will all have to adapt. And, some of us will be better able to adapt than others. You can run, but you can’t hide.

Once again, winners and losers.

In my own case, I’m lovin’ it.

And I have only one word for the rest of you…

Just One Word

Encryption.

Technology can be used to solve some of mankind’s thorniest problems.

I read about the “mosquito” several years ago. It’s a gizmo that emits an irritating, high-pitched sound that can be heard only by children and people into their early 20s, and is used to prevent teenagers congregating outside shops, schools and railway stations. It was invented by a  British Aerospace engineer, Howard Stapleton, who came up with the device after his daughter was intimidated by a gang of boys hanging around outside shops.

Brilliant.

Eats Mosquitoes

But nothing good goes unpunished.

An investigation by the Council of Europe found that the controversial “mosquito” device should be banned from Britain immediately … It found that “inflicting acoustic pain on young people and treating them as if they were unwanted birds or pests, is harmful [and] highly offensive.” …  Calls for a ban by Europe’s oldest political body are likely to be approved by the council’s parliamentary assembly in Strasbourg this week.

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After I got done chucking about “treating them [young people] as if they were unwanted birds or pests” I read the article a bit more carefully and got curious about what, exactly, is Europe’s oldest political body.

The Council of Europe, Europe’s oldest political body, aims to uphold human rights, democracy and the rule of law across the continent.

It emerged in 1949 from the ashes of World War II and now includes all European countries apart from Belarus … The council oversees the European Court of Human Rights … Lately, the council has become preoccupied with the problems of terrorism, organised crime, money laundering and human trafficking.

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Which should now be amended to, ” … the problems of terrorism, organised crime, money laundering, human trafficking and mosquitoes … “

Ribbit.

As a recovering procrastinator, I am big on last-minute gift ideas.

Here’s one for Father’s Day, and there is still plenty of time. Hours even.

So what’t the gift?

A Manly Rat. That’s also smart.

Specifically, an African giant pouched rat, about 30 inches long including tail. These are he-man rats, the kind that send cats fleeing. What’s more, we’re not talking about just any giant rat, but an educated one with the rodent equivalent of a Ph.D.

A Dutch company, Apopo, has trained these giant rats, which have poor sight but excellent noses, to detect landmines in Africa. The rats are too light to set off the mines, but they can explore a suspected minefield and point with their noses to buried mines. After many months of training, a rat can clear as much land in 20 minutes as a human can in two days.

In addition to earning their stripes as mine detectors, the giant rats are also trained in health work: detecting cases of tuberculosis. Possible TB sufferers provide samples of sputum, which are then handed over to the rats to sniff out. This detection process turns out to be much faster than your typical microscope examination. A technician with a microscope in Tanzania can screen about 40 samples a day, while one giant rat can screen the same amount in seven minutes.

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For a donation of $36 you buy a year’s worth of bananas for Ratso. And you can do it with the click of your mouse (sic), in plenty of time for Father’s Day.

Rat? That's Not A Rat, Now THIS Is A Rat

Speaking as a Dad I’d much rather get this than a tie, or even (gasp) a bottle of wine.

Here’s your link to donate.

Happy Father’s Day.

You’d think a barrel would just be a barrel.

But no, it turns out that a barrel of oil is 30% smaller than a barrel of wine. F2U Rio Linda a barrel of oil holds 42 gallons, while a barrel of wine holds 60 gallons.

I discovered this the other day while standing in front of a restaurant’s urinal in Healdsburg, California which is in the midst of Wine Country. If you are a guy you know that restaurants typically post ‘theme’ documents at strategic spots in their restrooms so that you can educate yourself while relieving yourself.

This was perhaps the very first form of multi-tasking.

Yes, I Stopped What I Was Doing To Snap This Pic With My iPhone

But I digress.

If you do the math, a ‘leak’ of 40,000 barrels of oil a day, is equivalent to a ‘leak’ of only 28,000 barrels of wine.

That sounds a lot better for several, mostly obvious, reasons.

Some might call this obfuscation, but I call it creative.

I’m surprised BP isn’t quoting the size of their spill using a wine barrel standard with a footnote to that effect on the second page of their press releases.

My father nurtured one, and passed it on to me.

And then in turn, I passed it down to my sons.

It must be a Patek Philippe watch, right?

You never actually own a Patek Philippe.

You merely look after it for the next generation.

Nope. In actual fact it’s a bad back.

Which brings me to my first travel tip, in our NYC Travel Note Series.

When you sit in an airplane seat you need a lumbar support, especially if you have a bad back. And since something like 70% of the population has one or will have one, this tip goes to the heart of any travel plan.

For years I would stuff a pillow or blanket behind my back. I stopped doing this, not because the airlines started charging for pillows and blankets, but because they don’t work.

Years ago I discovered the Eagle Creek Lumbar Support. This thing is brilliant. It inflates with a puff of air to give outstanding lumbar support. The killer feature is that it conforms perfectly to your back and the seat. Plus it has a bit of give during the bounces.

The Patek Is For Sure Pretty, But The "Cush" Doesn't Need Winding

You can forget the traveler’s checks, but don’t forget your lumbar support.

Trust me.

The good news is that if a catastrophic event destroys mankind our investments will be extremely well managed after we are gone. The bad news is that the computers doing it may be trading for their own accounts instead of ours.

This theater of the absurd scenario might be more plausible than you think, and occurred to me last week when our stock exchanges mysteriously melted down in the space of a few minutes.

I’m currently reading David Hoffman’s Pulitzer prize-winning book “The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race“. Its cheerful title is taken from a Soviet weapon system designed to have computers automatically fire a massive retaliatory nuclear strike at the US if Soviet leaders were ‘decapitated’ by an assumed US first strike.

The Soviets referred to a semi-automatic defense plan as the “Dead Hand.” The Dead Hand was a system that would fire a portfolio of SS-18′s on to the United States and Western Europe if its sensors made the conclusion that the Kremlin had been destroyed by a nuclear blast. The system was in place as early as the mid-80s. It is a bit of a miracle, given the demonstrated shortcomings of Soviet engineering, that it never made a mistake.

The Soviets claimed that they never actually set up a completely automated system, but instead would have had (surviving) lower level officials make the final decision on whether a strike was to be launched.

In any case I was struck by a parallel in last week’s breakdown of the US stock market. As I write this the SEC has still not tracked  down the specific cause of a 1000 point drop in the Dow that reduced a number of Dow Component stocks to pennies a share in the space of a few minutes. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief when, a few moments later, the market recovered as mysteriously as it had plummeted.

F2U Rio Linda, normally a quick recovery after a market drop is called Dead Cat Bounce by investors. So let’s refer to this event as a Dead Hand Bounce in homage to the anonymous computers that caused, and then corrected, the disruption.

Last One Out, Shut Off The Lights

Although the real cause of the market dislocation is still unknown, what is clear is that a number of computers were at the scene of the crime. And those computers place their trades so fast there is no way humans can be involved in real time to supervise.

By late Sunday, a cause of the slide hadn’t been determined … Still, some new details about what happened during the brief span Thursday afternoon that sent the Dow Jones Industrial Average into a nearly 1,000-point tailspin continued to emerge over the weekend …

But it is becoming clear that much of the decline was because of glitches in how the market functions. High-speed electronic trading, long held as a boon that has made the market more efficient, can also trigger sharp selloffs that overwhelm the market.

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Although everyone is relieved that this storm has passed, it reminds me of a that old saying, “Problems that go away on their own, come back on their own.“

And now that hackers know what’s possible, they will have begun working on their own version of the Dead Hand.

I wonder what they’ll call it.

Ah, the immigration debate ramps up again.

It shouldn’t take a Rocket Scientist to figure out, that by definition, enforcement requires a way to distinguish between the legals and illegals.

Common sense should tell you that the only way to do that on a day-to-day basis is with a National Identity Card authenticated by some form of biometric technology.

Unfortunately we have politicians who don’t agree.

The [reform] blueprint, written primarily by Mr. Schumer, includes a proposal for a Social Security card containing a biometric chip that all workers, including American citizens, would have to present to an employer when being hired.

Conservatives, while supporting stronger enforcement, have long opposed national identity cards, or making the Social Security card a de facto one.

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When they are not blocking legislation, they can listen to Fairy Tales to pass the time. It’s a nice world they live in,  where anyone can just look around and pick out the illegal immigrants.

We Don't Need Secure ID's In Our Fantasy World

And go to Arizona when it’s time for their R & R.

I have an acquaintance  in the packaging industry whose products utilize a super-strong cardboard. You can stand automobiles on boxes made of his cardboard; we are talking here about serious robustness.

Their shipping containers are  used to transport auto engines and heavy machinery.

Sit in your car, raise your hand up to touch the ‘head-liner’ on the inside of the roof, and you are probably touching another of their products.

Because their business was dependent on the (cyclical) auto industry, my acquaintance decided to look into other applications for their product that would be less cyclical.

He came up with the idea of making coffins for people who were planning to be cremated.

Brilliantly non-cyclical.

This was many years ago, and people were still purchasing expensive conventional caskets for their departed relatives despite the fact that they were going to be cremated, casket and all.

Unfortunately (at that time) the funeral industry was not receptive to new, cost-saving, ideas. And it’s not like consumers were demanding cardboard caskets.

His idea died a quiet death.

But times have changed. Cardboard is the New Green.

Google ‘Cardboard Caskets’ if you don’t believe me.

With Better Timing, It Could Have Been 'From Roads To Riches'

Next will be promotions that include casket offsets for people attending the funeral.

And remember, timing is everything.

Rome has seven famous hills, and an eighth that should be equally famous as a monument to product packaging, Mt. Testaccio. I learned about this when reading Four Seasons in Rome by Anthony Doerr. I also learned to be grateful that I never had to raise twins, but that’s another story.

Mt. Testaccio is composed almost entirely of  broken amphorae dating from the time of the Roman Empire. Amphorae are containers with thin necks, pointed bottoms, two handles and weigh in at about 66 pounds.

Amphorae first appeared on the Syrian coast around the 15th century BC and spread around the ancient world, being used by the ancient Greeks and Romans as the principal means for transporting and storing grapes, olive oil, wine, oil, olives, grain, fish, and other commodities. They were produced on an industrial scale from Greek times and used around the Mediterranean until about the 7th century … Amphorae were too cheap and plentiful to return to their origin-point and so, when empty, they were broken up at their destination. The vast majority of those vessels had a capacity of some 70 litres (15 imp gal; 18 U.S. gal) …

All this history reminded me of a modern equivalent.

Ancient Romans may have been the first, but they were not the last to Supersize Product delivery. We’ve taken a good idea and run with it; brighter colors and pour spouts.

The Amphorae Would Be The Ones On The Right

On the other hand, we have to give the Romans credit.

They had a lot more class.

Last week it was reported that Google is now working on something called Store View.

…they took pictures of the inside of the store, every 6 feet, in all directions. They also took pictures of products. Google Store View will allow people to … click on the door to enter it, all on Google Maps. Then when you enter the store, you can walk through it.

This would be an obvious extension of Google’s Street View, but obvious only in the sense that things which were inconceivable several years we now take for granted.

You probably know about Street View which allows you to (virtually) walk down most streets in the USA and many overseas. Jaw-dropping.

Here’s an example.

A few weeks ago I was reading a news article that contained a picture of a house in New York City. The particular subject isn’t important, but because my interest was tweaked, I decided to see to see if I could find the same house in Google’s Street View.

Here’s the original picture, which I’m sure required a photographer at some point to suit up and drive to the actual location of the townhouse.

Original Newspaper Picture of Townhouse

After only about 10 minutes of fiddling around with Street View and virtually walking up and down streets in the neighborhood I found what I believe is the same house. Keep in mind that I do this while sitting in my study in California, sipping a cup of coffee.

The Same Townhouse Found In Street View

So, two points: [1] the technology is absolutely amazing, [2] if the article was written today no photographer would have to actually go out to the scene.

And then I have to ask myself, ‘What View is Google going to introduce next?’ Keep in mind that Google has not given a very high priority to privacy lately, as evidenced by their botched introduction of Google Buzz.

So with this much technology, and no particular concerns about privacy, is it too much of a stretch for us to imagine Google solving part of our Health Care crisis by doing some Free Health Care Screening?

And that service would be called … Google Colonoscopy View.

Much More Photogenic Than A Colonoscopy