Fox News Anchor or Porn Star

I thought this was pretty good. It's harder than you think..

Buddha Bar

I'd like to recommend a group of albums that I have really enjoyed over the past few years. The entire Buddha Bar Series of Albums. Buddha Bar 1 - 8, all 2-disc sets. It's a world / jazz / house / lo-fi / chill compilation of music mixed together.

It is perfect background music for relaxing, studying, meditating, reading, subway drown-out etc. These albums got me through many tough nights of pre-exam cramming in school. In fact I think my brain is so accustomed to these albums that it kicks into another gear when I put them on. My work breaks occur during my favorite parts of certain songs, and I just kick back for a moment and listen.

There are so many languages and styles of music represented, they always remind me how big the world really is.

Entrepreneurship Quick Notes

According to some US government statistics: (I pulled these from a speech)

70% of college graduates will start a business at some point in their careers

In the baby boomer generation each worker held an average of 4 jobs by age 65
In our generation each worker holds 4 jobs by the time they are 30

50% of the jobs in the current US economy are in firms that are less than 5 years old.

And to end it nicely, I have a Bush Quote on entrepreneurship. "The problem with the French economy, is that they don't have a word for entrepreneur" (he he he)

To be fair, there is some debate that he did not really say this.

But if that's false I'll give you three more Bushisms: (sorry, couldn't resist)
1. “I am mindful not only of preserving executive powers for myself, but for predecessors as well.”
2. “Most imports are from outside of the country”
3. “You teach a child to read, and he or her will be able to pass a literacy test.”

Barack and Hillary's Days in Law School

I read a good article on the subway this morning. When They Were Young by John Heilemann.



Heilemann did a good job of relating how each candidate changed during his/her early years and gave some interesting biographical information from their pasts. I was interested to hear a little about Hillary and Bill's relationship; they married knowing they would be a political team. I also found it interesting how Obama was perceived by many of those around him as charismatic and confident, yet he resisted the call to become involved in student/political life until his time at the law review.

They Can't Kill The Electric Car

There has been more than one electric car program crushed (see photo) in the past few decades. Some say that big-auto and big-oil scrapped the most successful programs because they didn't like the thought of efficient automobiles dragging down future earnings. I wouldn't put it past them, but the good news is that the economy is becoming increasingly global; if US companies don't innovate then others will. More important to the dream of electric vehicles (E.V.'s) is the battery technology that has been developed to power our mobile electronic arsenals (especially lithium-ion batteries). Now more than ever it looks as if E.V.'s are ready to make an appearance in the marketplace and help relieve our dependence on foreign oil.

The Tesla Roadster is what really convinced me that E.V.'s were already practical and nearly ready to be adopted by people other than the super rich. Tesla Motor's founder Martin Eberhard showed excellent entrepreneurial skills by steering the company in its early stages and by raising the necessary capital from such investors as Sergey Brin and Elon Musk (paypal founder). Despite adequate funding, this company was still run like a start-up with a tight budget.

The newly released Tesla Roadster is a dream machine, designed to make people forget they ever though that an E.V. was a glorified golf cart. The car can go 0-60 in under 4 seconds, that's better than a Porsche 911 Turbo. It costs about 2cents a mile to operate, that would be kind of like getting 135 miles per gallon. Finally, the car can travel 245 miles on one charge. The downside is the $100,000 price tag. But as batteries continue to become more of a commodity and the design team works on a more practical vehicle we may start seeing E.V.'s on the road. Tesla has such a vehicle in the works (due out in 2010), and this one has an estimated $50-60,000 price tag. Now we're getting somewhere, lets keep cutting that price in half.

With continuing improvement to E.V. technology and better alternatives to coal power plants, it's not hard to imagine an environmentally friendly solution to transportation. I know the idea for the electric car has been bouncing around relatively unsuccessfully for many years. But get excited, every new bit of technology brings us that much closer. Most ideas take 20 years to become an overnight success.

(p.s. That link is a good article about a different type of solar power plant)

Taskbar Manager

Here is a program that incorporates a function I think windows should definitely have added. Taskbar Manager lets you move around the tabs on your taskbar into more logical groupings. I hate when I close outlook (it happens) and then open it to find it at the end of my tasks, I want it on the top left of my taskbar and sometimes I close every other program open to get it there (depends on my mood).

This program will do that, and I'd encourage you to visit their site where you too can learn that if you write a blog post they will give you the program or free! : )

While you're at it you might want to download the Alt-Tab Replacement power toy. It gives a view of each web page in the alt-tab menu, much like the Mac OS does.

Enjoy

Politics and Our Mercenaries

Many agree that 135,000 troops is not enough to occupy Iraq, Petraeus included. I was reading an interesting opinion piece online about the political nature of this war, and why private "contractors" are so prevalent. One of the most striking reasons is that the government does not have to report the deaths of our mercenaries.

"Since the troop "surge" started in January 2007, these numbers have accelerated -- contractors have been killed at a rate of nine per week. These figures mean that the private military industry has suffered more losses in Iraq than the rest of the coalition of allied nations combined. The losses are also far more than any single U.S. Army division has experienced."

The public isn't outraged by these deaths -they never hear about them. The extra money these mercenaries receive is keeping a lid on the bad news. If you believe in our system, you can't blame them individually. They make much more than the average American. But they aren't necessarily fighting for their country, they are fighting for their pocketbooks. In this case there is a capitalist incentive to fight, but no capitalist incentive to win (especially the hearts and minds of Iraqis).