Art Diamond – Page 414 – artdiamondblog.com

Ted Kennedy Sabotages Wind Farm that Would Be Visible from His Cape Cod Estate

Part of a Greenpeace ad lambasting Senator Edward Kennedy’s opposition to windmills that would effect his view. Source of image of part of ad: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited below.

(p. W8) Behind much of the modern environmental movement lies the "do as I say, not as I do" sensibility of an aristocracy. It’s not surprising when a bunch of enviro-aristos line up opposition to a new road or a shopping mall or some other development that offends them. But there is something delicious about such obstructionists raising environmental concerns — almost all of them bogus — to try to prevent a wind farm, one of the cleanest sources of electricity we have, from being built in sight of their summer homes.

. . .

Sen. Kennedy presented the spectacle of working hard behind the scenes to sabotage the wind farm while publicly castigating the Bush administration for its alleged failure to push environmental technology.

. . .

The real outrage here is the agonizing delay in gaining approval for Cape Wind — all too typical, alas, of how things work, or don’t, in Massachusetts. A not-in-my-backyard campaign ought to target something at least potentially unpleasant, but the "visual pollution" that so angered Mr. McCullough would be minuscule. From Sen. Kennedy’s compound five miles away, a 417-foot tower appears about as tall as the thumbnail at the end of your outstretched arm. It makes you wonder how Cape Wind’s opponents would react if a developer planned a pharmaceutical factory in, say, Hyannis — civil disobedience, perhaps? Exquisitely catered, of course.

For the full review, see:

GUY DARST. "You’re Blocking My View." The Wall Street Journal (Fril, May 25, 2007): W8.

(Note: ellipses added.)

Source of the book image: http://ec1.images-amazon.com/images/I/51p+cPVSstL._SS500_.jpg

Earmarks Often Promote Lawmakers’ Personal Fame and Fortune

"A Kennedy-era tray and a Laura Bush mask at an Ohio library honoring first ladies. The library received a $130,000 earmark." Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. A23) WASHINGTON, Nov. 12 — Buried deep in the largest domestic spending bill of the year is money for a library and museum honoring first ladies. The $130,000 was requested by the local congressman, Representative Ralph Regula, Republican of Ohio. The library was founded by his wife, Mary A. Regula. The director of the library is his daughter, Martha A. Regula.

Other “namesake projects” in the bill include the Charles B. Rangel Center for Public Service at City College of New York, named for the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee; the Thad Cochran Research Center at the University of Mississippi, named for the senior Republican on the Senate Appropriations Committee; and the Thomas Daschle Center for Public Service at South Dakota State University, honoring the former Senate Democratic leader.

The bill also includes “Harkin grants” to build schools and promote healthy lifestyles in Iowa, where Senator Tom Harkin, a Democrat, is running for re-election.

Namesake projects are not new, but the appetite for such earmarks appears to be undiminished. The items illustrate the way in which lawmakers funnel federal money to projects in their home states, despite promises to rein in the practice. House and Senate negotiators last week approved a modest reduction in pet projects for health care, education and other domestic programs. But more than 2,200 hospitals and clinics, schools and colleges, museums and social service agencies get money for specific projects, including health information technology, teacher training and the promotion of sexual abstinence. Rather than making hard choices, negotiators accepted almost all the earmarks recommended by either chamber.

Senators John McCain of Arizona and Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, both Republicans, cited the first ladies library as one of the more egregious. Mr. McCain said it illustrated the “many wasteful items tucked away in this bill.”

For the full story, see:

ROBERT PEAR. "One Lawmaker’s Waste Is Another’s Namesake." The New York Times (Tues., November 13, 2007): A23.

Source of map graphic: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited above.

When the Oldest Car Was New, Only the Rich Could Afford One

When LaMarquise was made in 1884, only the very rich could afford to buy a car. Source of photo: online verison of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. 11) David Burgess-Wise, a writer and automotive historian who closely examined La Marquise for Automobile Quarterly in 1995, said that some older steam-powered conveyances existed, but either they were no longer running or had not been designed as automobiles — that is, as relatively compact four-wheel machines that were not trucks, intended to carry people.

When the count lured Georges Bouton and Charles-Armand Trépardoux to make automobiles in Paris in 1882, the latter were turning out miniature steam engines and mechanical toys. The partners experimented with tricycles, then turned out two four-wheelers with vertical boilers, front drive and rear steering. They looked like coffee pots on perambulator wheels.

Then, in 1884, La Marquise was constructed with a much shorter boiler of concentric rings (like Russian nesting dolls, Mr. Burgess-White noted) and two cylinders beneath the floor driving close-set rear wheels via locomotive cranks. Water was carried in a tank under the seat, and coke or coal was kept in a square bunker surrounding the boiler. Coke was withdrawn through drawers at the bottom and poured down a pipe in the center of the boiler onto the fire beneath.

. . .

The company produced sales brochures in 1886 with illustrations of a steam phaeton, dog cart, truck, carriage and 18-seat bus. By 1889 you could buy a tricycle for 2,800 francs ($540) or a quadricycle for 4,400 francs ($850). But that was a prince’s ransom at a time when a French laborer might make five francs a day. Only the very rich could buy a motorized vehicle.

As a result, only about 30 De Dion steamers were made, Mr. Burgess-Wise estimated, including 20 tricycles, 5 quadricycles and a few larger carts and carriages.

Mr. Moore said he thought there may have been only four quadricycles, two of which remain. Six tricycles are known to still exist, but none are operable.

For the full story, see:

PAUL DUCHENE. "COLLECTING; For Sale: ’84 Model. Runs Great." The New York Times, SpotsSunday Section (Sun., August 19, 2007): 11.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

Soon to be former owner Tim Moore (right) takes David Gooding for a characteristically steamy ride. Source of photo: online verison of the NYT article quoted and cited above.

“Global Warming Provides Opportunities”

(p. C3) In the short term, global warming provides opportunities, . . . , especially in temperate zones. Warming trends have lengthened the golfing season in Antalya, Turkey, by over a month, said Ugur Budak, golf coordinator of Akkanat Holdings there.

Golfing used to begin in March. But tourists from Britain and Germany are now coming to Antalya in February.

“Winters are milder, so the effect on us for now is good,” Mr. Budak said. So far there had not been problems like water shortages that are experienced in other parts of the world, he said, “but we know we could be vulnerable in the future.”

For the full story, see:

ELISABETH ROSENTHAL. "How Do You Ski if There Is No Snow?" The New York Times (Thurs., November 1, 2007): C3.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

“Adopt the Schumpeterian Ethos of Creative Destruction”

Source of graphic: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited below.

(p. R10) High-technology industries are tough places to do business.

Competition is constant, fierce and characterized by only temporary advantage, fueled by the ease with which software makers and other high-tech companies can copy and distribute new products and services.

Instantaneous delivery through the Internet to hundreds of millions of consumers means a company with a slightly better online marketplace or search engine, for example, can quickly dominate the market, and just as easily be dethroned by a rival with a new approach.

If this brutal competitive cycle — first described as "creative destruction" by Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter in 1942 — makes you uncomfortable, we’ve got some bad news.

We’ve been studying competition in all U.S. industries, not just the high-tech ones, and we’ve observed a remarkable pattern: On average, the whole U.S. economy has become more "Schumpeterian" since the mid-1990s. What’s more, these changes have been greatest in the industries that buy the most software and computer hardware.

Over the past dozen years, in other words, information-technology consumption is associated with the kinds of competitive dynamics we’re accustomed to seeing in the IT-producing industries. And because every industry will become even more IT-intensive over the next decade, we expect competition to become even more Schumpeterian.

. . .

(p. R11) For executives, the key lesson is to treat information-technology efforts as opportunities to define and deploy new ways of working, rather than just projects to install, configure or integrate systems. Our work suggests three broad areas of focus for top managers:

– First, they need to look at how the company should be doing business differently. That means deciding what new tasks should be enabled with technology, and how widely they should be deployed.

– Second, managers need to lead the deployment of new procedures to success. People don’t like changes to their jobs dictated from outside and embedded in software. Overcoming this inertia and resistance requires skillful leadership.

– Third, managers need to foster innovation by encouraging experimentation, collaboration, dialogue and all of the other activities that generate good ideas. That means building a technology infrastructure and an accompanying set of practices that reduce the cost of creating and replicating process innovations.

Managers might not want competition in their industry to become more Schumpeterian, but they don’t have a choice. Companies are using IT to increase the speed of process innovation and replication. These companies drive the competitive dynamics of their industries, rather than reacting to them, leaving their rivals with a stark choice: Adopt the Schumpeterian ethos of creative destruction, or watch from the sidelines as others increasingly gain market share and value.

For the full story, see:

ANDREW MCAFEE and ERIK BRYNJOLFSSON. "Technology; Dog Eat Dog; Be warned: Industries that buy a lot of technology are becoming as cutthroat as those that produce technology." The Wall Street Journal (Sat., April 28, 2007): R10 & R11.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

Earmarks Increase Wasteful Government Spending

Source of table: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. A1) WASHINGTON, Nov. 3 — Even though members of Congress cut back their pork barrel spending this year, House lawmakers still tacked on to the military appropriations bill $1.8 billion to pay 580 private companies for projects the Pentagon did not request.

Twenty-one members were responsible for about $1 billion in earmarks, or financing for pet projects, according to data lawmakers were required to disclose for the first time this year. Each asked for more than $20 million for businesses mostly in their districts, ranging from major military contractors to little known start-ups.

The list is topped by the veteran earmark champions Representative John P. Murtha, a Pennsylvania Democrat who is the chairman of the powerful defense appropriations subcommittee, and Representative C. W. Bill Young of Florida, the top Republican on the panel, who asked for $166 million and $117 million respectively. It also includes $92 million in requests from Representative Jerry Lewis, Republican of California, a committee member who is under federal investigation for his ties to a lobbying firm whose clients often benefited from his earmarks.

The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, requested $32 million in earmarks, while Steny H. Hoyer, the majority leader, asked for $26 million for projects in the $459.6 billion defense bill, the largest of the appropriations bills that go through Congress.

As promised when they took (p. A27) control of Congress in January, House Democratic leaders cut in half from last year the value of earmarks in the bill, as they did in the other 11 agency spending measures. But some lawmakers complained that the leadership failed to address what it had called a “culture of corruption” in which members seek earmarks to benefit corporate donors. Earmarks have been a recurring issue in recent Congressional scandals, most recently the 2005 conviction of Representative Randy Cunningham, Republican of California, for accepting bribes from defense contractors.

“Pork hasn’t gone away at all,” said Representative Jeff Flake, Republican of Arizona, an earmark critic who cites the “circular fund-raising” surrounding many of them. “It would be wonderful if this was a partisan issue, with Republicans on the right side, but it is really not. Many of these companies use money appropriated through earmarks to turn around and lobby for more money. Some of them are just there to receive earmarks.”

Congressional earmarks are for programs that are not competitively bid , and the Bush administration has complained that they waste taxpayer dollars and skew priorities from military needs, like the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the global war on terror.

Thomas E. Mann, a Congressional scholar and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, though, sees the costs of earmarks as less of a problem than their potential for abuse.

“The fiscal fallout of earmarks is trivial,” he said. But they can lead to “conflicts of interest, the irrational and unconstructive allocation of resources, or their use by Congressional leaders as carrots and sticks to buy votes for larger measures that clearly lack majority support on the merits.”

For the full story, see:

MARILYN W. THOMPSON and RON NIXON. "Even Cut 50 Percent, Earmarks Clog Military Bill." The New York Times, First Section (Sun., November 4, 2007): 1 & 27.

Unwashed Hospital Worker Hands Often Spread Disease

"A special light reveals deadly bacteria." Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

If health care in the U.S. were a free market, with unregulated entry, and real consumer choice, it is hard to believe that some Wal-Mart-of-health-care wouldn’t come along that would gain huge market share and profits by providing its employees incentives to wash their hands.

(p. A1) PITTSBURGH — At a veterans’ hospital here, nurses swab the nasal passages of every arriving patient to test them for drug-resistant bacteria. Those found positive are housed in isolation rooms behind red painted lines that warn workers not to approach without wearing gowns and gloves.

Every room and corridor is equipped with dispensers of foamy hand sanitizer. Blood pressure cuffs are discarded after use, and each room is assigned its own stethoscope to prevent the transfer of microorganisms. Using these and other relatively inexpensive measures, the hospital has significantly reduced the number of patients who develop deadly drug-resistant infections, long an unaddressed problem in American hospitals.

The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention projected this year that one of every 22 patients would get an infection while hospitalized — 1.7 million cases a year — and that 99,000 would die, often from what began as a routine procedure. The cost of treating the infections amounts to tens of billions of dollars, experts say.

But in the past two years, a few hospitals have demonstrated that simple screening and isolation of patients, along with a relentless focus on hygiene, can reduce the number of dangerous infections. By doing so, they have fueled a national debate about whether hospitals are doing all they can to protect patients from infections, which are now linked to more deaths than diabetes or Alzheimer’s disease.

. . .

(p. A16) Dr. Richard P. Shannon, who championed a program to reduce catheter infections at Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh, was able to show administrators that the average infection cost the hospital $27,000. He demonstrated that reimbursement payments for weeks of extended treatment were not keeping pace with actual costs. “I think it was assumed that hospitals didn’t mind treating these infections because they were getting paid for it,” Dr. Shannon said.

A major emphasis at the Pittsburgh hospitals has been hand hygiene. Studies have consistently shown that busy hospital workers disregard basic standards more than half the time. At the veterans hospital, where nurses have taken to pushing elevator buttons with their knuckles, annual spending on hand cleaner has doubled.

For the full story, see:

KEVIN SACK. "Swabs in Hand, Hospital Cuts Deadly Infections." The New York Times (Fri., July 27, 2007): A1 & A16.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

In the photo on the right, Pittsburgh nurse Bill Cunningham, "puts on a gown and gloves before approaching patients with infections." Source of graph, caption, and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited above.

X Prize Foundation “Encourages Entrepreneurship”

"From left, Bob Weiss of the X Prize Foundation; Larry Page of Google; Peter Diamandis of X Prize; Buzz Aldrin, the astronaut." Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. 33) THE quests are monumental: end global warming; build a private spaceship; cure diseases; develop a car that can go 100 miles on a gallon of gas.

But the prizes are also monumental: millions and millions of dollars.

Such extreme public interest projects have been taken up by foundations, most prominently the X Prize Foundation, an 11-year-old group in Santa Monica, Calif., that rewards innovation on an entirely new scale.

“The world faces difficult problems — bigger than government, business and nonprofits can handle,” said Tom Vander Ark, president of the X Prize Foundation. The foundation encourages entrepreneurship, he said, and “competitions can create and reshape markets.”

In 1996, the foundation offered a $10 million prize, called the Ansari X, for someone to invent a private passenger rocket ship able to fly nearly 70 miles up and back again. A team led by the aerospace engineer Burt Rutan, and paid for with more than $20 million from Paul G. Allen, a founder of Microsoft, collected the $10 million in 2004.

The X Prize Foundation is not alone in its ambitious ventures: Google.org, the nearly two-year-old philanthropic arm of Google, has kicked off a $10 million competition to inspire production of plug-in hybrid vehicles so energy efficient they can sell excess electricity back to the utility.

. . .

“It’s a new kind of grant-making,” said Jonathan Greenblatt, an entrepreneur who sold his company, Ethos Water, to Starbucks and became a senior adviser to the X Prize Foundation. “It’s a mode that encourages experimentation rather than prescribing solutions. It sets the stage for innovation and dynamism that the grantor can’t anticipate.”

. . .

Cash prizes to induce innovation are not new. Peter Diamandis, the 46-year-old aeronautical engineer and physician who founded the X Prize Foundation, said he was inspired by the $25,000 aviation prize offered in 1919 by a New York hotelier, Raymond Orteig, to the first person to fly nonstop from New York to Paris. The prize went, of course, to Charles Lindbergh, whose grandson, Erik Lindbergh, is on the X Prize Foundation board.

In the same spirit, “We asked ourselves, how do we demonstrate the technology and stimulate market interest?” said Dan Reicher, director of climate and energy initiatives at Google.org. “How do we advance the technology around plug-ins? The usual way is to quietly go about looking at investment opportunities, make investments and have some impact. We decided to take a different route, a public request for investment proposals. We wanted to look beyond the usual players, bring attention to a critical area and catalyze competition and innovation.”

. . .

The X Prize Foundation announced the new competitions at the Clinton Global Initiative, a conference organized by former President Bill Clinton and held in September in New York.

“Think of this,” Mr. Clinton said at the time. “Twelve prizes in areas designed to break barriers to human health, have children live longer, solve all these education problems and do it in the most cost-effective way. This is the most amazing idea to me, trying to unleash entrepreneurship in the public interest.”

For the full story, see:

KEITH SCHNEIDER. "Win Fabulous Prizes, All in the Name of Innovation." The New York Times, Giving Special Section (Sun., November 12, 2007): 33.

(Note: ellipses added.)

“People Giddy on Hope and Thrilled to Be Changing”

"Emily Prager at her lane house in Shanghai." Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

The centers of dynamism are not set in stone. I once asked the philosopher Alan Donagan why the Scottish enlightenment had occurred where (Edinburgh) and when (in the mid-late 18th century) it did. With his usual good humor he told me that I was asking a bad question–that my question assumed that enlightenments were determined. He instead believed that they were chance occurrences resulting from the free-will choices of individuals.

I think that there was something to what he said. But I also believe that some institutions, and some policies of government, can greatly increase the probability that fruitful dynamism will occur. For instance, free markets tend to tolerate diversity and experimentation, and to reward initiative.

In the past, locations of economic dynamism, also were often locations of intellectual dynamism. I wonder if the connection is still true today, and if not, why not?

Among past centers of dynamism were Miletus, Athens, Florence, Amsterdam, Edinburgh, and New York City. Today, centers of economic dynamism include Las Vegas, Dubai and Shanghai. The article quoted below paints a generally appealing picture of Shanghai.

(p. D1) I decided to move myself and my 12-year-old daughter, Lulu — whom I had adopted as a baby in China — from the old capital of the world to the new: to make a home in Shanghai, a city of the future.

I knew something about Shanghai, having been here on trips several times in the last few years. The city was always so excited it could hardly contain itself. It is a microcosm of the Asian boom, stuffed with people giddy on hope and thrilled to be changing. It recalls the greatness of New York in the early ’70s, except for one thing: Like the rest of China, Shanghai was largely closed to the outside world, and real economic growth, for nearly 50 years after World War II. It is a place where every car on the road is brand new and every pet recently acquired, but the person you just met might trace his family back 70 generations. The modernity and polish that Manhattan learned between 1945 and 1995, Shanghai is cramming for as fast as it can, and it’s fascinating to watch.

. . .

(p. D6) Pets are new to Chinese people and they don’t know very much about them. Dogs are not neutered and they are walked without leashes. Many people are terrified of dogs, particularly given the country’s serious rabies problem.

Twice when I was walking Skippy, young women caught sight of him and screamed in terror at the top of their lungs. Because having a pet is so new, there is a video showing how to pick up after a dog and wash his paws after his walk, which appears many times a day on a huge video screen on Huaihai, the city’s other main shopping street.

For the full story, see:

EMILY PRAGER. "At Home Abroad; Settling Down in a City in Motion." The New York Times (Thurs., July 19, 2007): D1 & D6.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

"On the streets of Shanghai, the author’s injured foot attracts less attention than her pet dog, still a rare sight in the city." Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited above.

Entrepreneur Bets His Wealth on a Risky, Important Project

"Alfred E. Mann, at his home in Beverly Hills, Calif., has put nearly $1 billion of his own money into developing an insulin that can be inhaled." Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. C1) LOS ANGELES, Nov. 15 — Pfizer, the world’s biggest drug company, flopped miserably with a seemingly can’t-miss idea. But Alfred E. Mann is so certain he can succeed that he is betting nearly $1 billion of his own money on the effort.

Pfizer’s failure was a form of insulin that people with diabetes could inhale rather than inject. But last month, after selling only $12 million worth of inhaled insulin in the first nine months of the year, Pfizer said it would take a $2.8 billion charge and abandon the product.

Mr. Mann, the 82-year-old chief executive and controlling shareholder of the MannKind Corporation, is not deterred. He says his company’s inhalable insulin is not just a way to avoid needles but is medically superior to Pfizer’s product and to injected insulin.

If he is right, he could help change the way diabetes is treated.

“I believe this is one of the most valuable products in history in the drug industry, and I’m willing to back it up with my estate,” Mr. Mann said at his 23,000-square-foot mansion overlooking the San Fernando Valley. The interview took place on a Saturday evening, which Mr. Mann said was the only opening in his seven-day work schedule.

Despite Mr. Mann’s remarkable entrepreneurial career — he has founded more than a dozen aerospace and medical device companies — there are people who wonder whether he has so much invested in this latest effort, both financially and emotionally, that he cannot see any odds against him.

“I don’t know of an individual who has spent as much of a personal fortune on a long shot,” said Andrew Forman, an analyst with WR Hambrecht & Company. Mr. Forman said MannKind faced numerous regulatory and patent challenges, as well as possible competition from the leaders in injected insulin, Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk, which are also developing inhalable products.

For the full story, see:

ANDREW POLLACK. "Betting an Estate on Inhaled Insulin." The New York Times (Fri., November 16, 2007): C1 & C5.

"The inhaled insulin device, about the size of a cellphone." Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited above.