White House Chronicle

News Analysis With a Sense of Humor

The Changing Face of Electricity Supply

by Leave a Comment

Management theory says, “Stick to what you know. Don’t stray from you core business.” That’s all well and good, but what happens when the core is changing and it’s no longer a reliable source of profit and continuity?

At the top of my list of companies that didn’t make changes fast enough is one that is still around, but is far different from the ubiquitous giant it used to be: Western Union.

Until change swept away its core business, this was the company that had an iron grip on the business of leased wires, cables and telegrams. Western Union was the communications giant of its day, but it was overwhelmed by disruptive technology — technology it failed to grasp.

Gone are the days when it was a household word and anyone who wanted to move anything electronically, from newspaper copy to birthday wishes, used Western Union. Today it’s a money transfer service.

Western Union could not have foreseen the Internet, but it could’ve grasped it. What’s more, the telegraph business began to falter just about the time the overnight package business exploded.

So here’s the question: Why didn’t Western Union, which already blanketed the country with offices and messengers, gravitate to the parcels delivery business?

The answer is that the history of old-line companies adjusting to new realities is not good. Being willing to change and changing are not the same thing.

These are issues that are beginning to buffet the nation’s electric utilities, as they face the disruptive effects of new technologies. So far the winds of change are blowing lightly, just a zephyr.

A conference in Washington on April 9-10, organized by Public Utilities Fortnightly, will examine the issue of the disruptions that are transforming the industry. Ken Silverstein, editor in chief, says, “My own research is showing that people at all levels of all utilities are thinking about the new energy paradigm. But thinking about it and acting are two different things. Some utilities are really moving aggressively, and others are far more deliberate in their approach.”

The immediate agents of change encroaching on the electric utilities are rooftop solar, installed by homeowners, and microgrids, where a group of alternative generators are linked together and hook into the utility grid as one entity.

Rooftop solar generation is growing exponentially, pushed by tax advantages, politics and the preference of individuals to embrace green alternatives. Large vendors, such as SolarCity, have made a business of leasing rooftop collectors to homeowners. Self-generation often makes economic sense, particularly if surplus electricity can be sold back to the electric grid: a practice called “net-metering.”

But net-metering is distressing to the utilities because the self-generators have become customers of convenience and don’t contribute to the maintenance of the grid on which everyone relies. Long term this means high rates for those who can’t go solar, like apartment dwellers.

This challenge to the economics of the grid comes at a time when the utilities are implementing their own changes in the form of the so-called “smart grid,” which incorporates remote meter-reading and data collection on user habits, and offers the chance for the utilities to offer customers advantageous off-peak rates, known as “demand-side management.”

The Washington conference is likely to hear how some utilities are hoping to embrace the changes while others are hoping that regulation will save their core business.

Among those big utilities that have embraced the changes that are coming is NRG Energy, a holding company which owns two utilities, and San Diego Gas & Electric.

New players on the horizon suggest that rooftop solar may just be the beginning of what is shaking up the traditionally staid utility industry. These include Google and Tesla Motors, which are both investing in the renewable future and which may not care who they push aside.

The question for the utilities: Can they adjust fast enough to save the economics of the grid and honor their obligations to serve? They might want to ponder the words of David Lloyd George, the British prime minister, who said: “It is dangerous to leap a chasm in two bounds.”

Hanoi Diary

by 1 Comment

DSCN3574

Making your way through the traffic in Hanoi, whether by foot, bike, motorbike or automobile, is like playing the game of pick-up sticks.

In the game, a bundle of 50 sticks is released on a tabletop. Each player in turn tries to pick up a stick from the jumbled pile without disturbing any of the others. It is a mentally and physically challenging game.

When the pile is gone, the player with the most sticks wins. Like a pick-up sticks player, a pedestrian, bicyclist or motorist becomes a winner when they have picked a path unharmed through Hanoi‘s traffic tangle.

During my December visit, I saw few traffic accidents in the city. Considering the millions of motorbikes (often ridden by a mother with an infant sitting on her lap and a child clinging to her back, or a deliveryman obscured by his cargo) that cross paths with those of cars, buses, trucks, people pulling handcarts, bicycles and pedestrians, that is a miracle. Or, maybe, it is just common courtesy.

DSCN3349Speaking of tangles, I have never seen anything quite like the mess of overhead power lines, telephone and television cables in Hanoi. The wires, all twisted together and hanging from poles or banyan trees, look like mad dreadlocked hair.

These wires are an eyesore and a huge public hazard.

In June 2013, the English-language daily Viet Nam News reported, Nguyen Thi Nga, a resident in Hai Ba Trung District’s Lang Yen Street, received an electric shock while opening her shop door near an electric pole after heavy rain. Even though uninjured, she has a panic attack when she thinks of it.

“ ‘The whole area is covered with messy and dangerous wires, and they threaten local lives when it rains,” said Nga, adding that after big rains last year, electric discharges damaged many appliances in nearby homes.”

Electric poles holding hundreds of heavy, tangled wires particularly threaten residents in the capital city’s old tenement houses. A group of tenement houses at 30 Pham Van Dong Street is an example, Viet Nam News reported. “Many loose wires hang down from power poles and some even touch the heads of passers-by.

DSCN3470“ ‘Wires even hang down near the public playground, which threatens out children’s safety, said Dam Thi Diu, a 33-year-old resident in Tu Liem District, adding that promises to clean up the problem had been made many times.”

Vu Quoc Hung, deputy director of the Ha Noi Power Corporation, told Viet Nam News that “Hanoi will try its best to have the cables buried on 321 city streets by 2015.” That effort is now coming down to the wire.

The Red River runs through North Vietnam and its folk theater, which includes Cheo and water puppetry.

Thang_Long_Water_Puppet_Theatre2Dating back to the 11th century, water puppetry was created by Red River Delta rice farmers who built simple stages on the surfaces of ponds and paddy fields. The shows were supposed to entertain the villagers and the spirits, so that they wouldn’t make mischief.

Nowadays, water puppetry is performed at the Thang Long Water Puppet Theater in Hanoi. After entering the theater, you walk up a narrow, wooden staircase to a first-floor landing. Wooden puppets, laquered white — and some around 30 pounds — are piled on the floor.

The puppets perform in a big pool of water; they enter the water stage through a curtain strung behind it. They are controlled through a pole-and-string rig, hidden beneath the water surface, by eight puppeteers standing in waist-deep water behind the stage.

Water_Puppet_Theatre_Vietnam(1)

Musicians, sitting on one side of the pool, provide music and sound effects on traditional Vietnamese instruments. They also do the puppets’ voices.

The night I went to the Thang Long theater, the program included a folk music opening, followed by a 14-scene water puppet performance portraying rural life (planting rice, fishing, chasing the fox that tries to catch ducks); sacred animals (dragon, unicorn, tortoise and phoenix danse); and national history (Le Loi, a 15th-century hero, returning a sword to Kim Quy, the Golden Tortoise God, on a lake in Hanoi).

The puppets, either vividly lit or shrouded in fog, moved on the water stage like ballet dancers, twirling, diving and swooping in intricate patterns. At the end of the performance, the puppeteers emerged from the water to take a dripping bow.

Water_puppets_2508154456_bbb0c9b315_b

Water puppetry is a preserved art form. “The secret of how water puppet shows work has been kept quiet for centuries. The puppeteers even have their own dialect and codewords to prevent someone from overhearing talk of a particular technique,” according to the Thang Long theater.

“Trying to figure out exactly how puppeteers can control the intricate movements blindly is part of the magic of each water puppet show. Great shows of skill include passing objects from puppet to puppet and other coordinated movements, which have to be done by instinct rather than sight. The musicians, who can see the puppets, sometimes shout code words to warn the puppeteers when a puppet is not where it should be.”

The performance I saw delighted children, adults – and, not doubt, spirits with mischief on their minds.

DSCN3420

China has its Peking Opera. Japan has its Noh Opera. Vietnam has its Hat Cheo theater. Tales of life in North Vietnam’s Red River Delta are told through musicals at the Cheo theater, Nha Hat Cheo Vietnam, in Hanoi.

This form of musical theater (“hat” means “to sing”) satirizes social classes in North Vietnam, from farmers, monks and students to wealthy people, dates back to around the 11th century. Until the 16th century, these musical tales were performed by traveling, amateur troupes in village squares and building courtyards. Today, they are performed by professionals at Nha Hat Cheo Vietnam, a theater in Hanoi.

Hat Cheo has little in the way of scenery, costumes and makeup. The accompanying orchestra comprises drums, bamboo flutes, fiddles, lutes and zithers.

Every Friday and Saturday night at 8 p.m., the Hanoi theater offers a top-of-the-pops program, titled “5 Most Favored Lyrics of Cheo Art Music.” The program is “a new and innovative approach to introducing audiences to the traditional Cheo art,” according to the theater.

There’s no place like Hang Ma Street for the holidays – any seasonal holiday, from traditional Vietnamese to Christmas.

Christmas is celebrated in Vietnam, and widely across Asia, as a major shopping holiday. And in December, Hang Ma shops were brimming with yuletide treasures: synthetic Christmas trees leaning against front windows; Santa Claus suits and hats in all sizes, from baby to daddy, hanging from rafters; ornaments, tinsel and wrapping paper crowding shelves; and glitter banners reading “Merry Christmas” adorning entrances.

DSCN3379
The legendary white horse of Hanoi.

 

Instead of a full-length musical, the program includes pieces played by the Cheo orchestra and individual members. One piece, titled “Ways To Pass the Hardship and Sorrows,” is played on a bau, a one-stringed zither which makes a soulful sound. Another piece, titled “Xuy Van Sharing Her Sad Mood and Broken Heart,” is played on a bamboo flute.

The program closes with the orchestra playing “Fate of a Bad Luck Lady,” a piece with a decidedly downbeat title. After hearing it, audiences may wonder whether to give the musicians a standing O, or a standing Oh dear!

*****

On the road from Hanoi to Halong Bay, you’ll see mile after mile of industry. In fact, almost no stretch of the 100-mile-long, main highway is without some form of industry, from single human to heavy. DSCN3378

Just across the Red River, on the outskirts of Hanoi, I saw workers with bodies shaped like question marks tending rice fields. An hour away, I saw mountains with red gashes from clay mining; a nearby village had bricks and clay pottery stacked high in front of shops. Passing through another village, I saw garage-like shops displaying elaborately carved, wooden furniture – massive bed headboards, dining sets and sofas fit for the palaces of ancient kings, or the new Vietnamese McMansions.

Nearing Halong Bay, there is a dreary stretch of highway. The road and villages are covered in soot. “This is a coal-mining area,” my guide, Tran Huong, said. I didn’t need to be told.

DSCN3359
The Old City temple courtyard, strung with birdcages.

Between these villages, I saw all sorts of highway vendors: women in triangular straw hats, selling fruit and vegetables, squatting on the side of the road, their toes within inches of bicyclists and speeding vehicles; men keeping a nonchalant eye on black sandals and shoes, displayed in rows, looking like dashed lines along the highway.

The industry of the Vietnamese is one of the country’s wonders.

 

 

The Environmental Voices in Obama’s Ear

by Leave a Comment

In the South they ask, “Who’s your daddy?” In the North, “Where did you go to college?”
In Washington we ask this very real question, “Who’s advising him?” Washington believes in advisers, who are often the authors of big decisions made by others.
When George W. Bush was running for president the first time, I raised the question about his lack of knowledge in foreign policy. One of his staunch supporters countered, “He’ll have good advisers.”
Advisers come in all shapes and sizes in politics. A trusted aide may shape a senator’s understanding of an issue, and set the legislator on a path that later might be regretted but cannot be reversed. “Flip-flop” is a deadly accusation in public life.
When President Obama makes a decision, one wonders on whose advice? Who started the locomotive rolling down the track?
This week, one wonders who led Obama to endlessly delay a decision on the Keystone XL pipeline, which should have been a rather mundane issue until he was backed into vetoing a congressional effort to move the project forward?
There are 2.5 million miles of pipe buried in the ground in the U.S.,190,000 of which carry crude oil. The Keystone XL pipeline would have carried crude for 1,179 miles. It should have been a no-brainer for the State Department, which has jurisdiction because a foreign country, Canada, is involved. It is not hard to make a pipeline safe, and this one would be engineered as no other has.
But a core of dedicated environmentalists saw it as a wedge. Their target was not then and never has been the pipeline, but rather the Alberta oil sands project, where much of the oil would originate. By cutting off deliveries of the oil to the U.S. market, they hoped to wound the project and eventually close it down.
I am no fan of the oil sands – which used to be called “tar sands” – project. I think it is abusive of the earth. It involves massive surface mining and has so scarred the region that the great pit can be seen from space. It is also a contributor to air pollution because the sands have to be retorted with natural gas.
It is not a pretty business wringing the oil from the sands. However, not building the pipeline will not close down the oil sands project as environmentalists have hoped. Only low prices can do that.
The Canadians are angry. They feel betrayed by the White House and stigmatized by outside forces like the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), which has been a relentless antagonist of the pipeline and the oil sands project.
The question is who persuaded Obama? In November 2011, Canada’s minister of natural resources, Joe Oliver, told me at an energy meeting in Houston that he had been told privately that the pipeline deal was done, and he was expecting Obama to sign off on a State Department decision in weeks.
But it did not happen. One or more people in the White House – Obama takes advice from a small circle of advisers in the White House rather than his cabinet secretaries — was able to sow doubt in the president’s mind about the pipeline.
The results: More oil moves by rail car which is resulting in accidents in Canada and the United States. An ally is offended, and there is bad blood that will affect other trade issues. Thousands of construction jobs in the Midwest are lost. Obama looks bad: the captive of a very small part of the constituency that elected him.
There is an echo here of the folly of the president in abandoning the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository. On the surface, Obama bowed to the wishes of Harry Reid, then Senate majority leader. It has been accepted by the nuclear industry as a cold, hard political gift to a vital ally.
But as time has gone on, the nuclear spent fuel has piled up at the nation’s power plants, as the cost of the abandonment has risen – it stands at $18 billion. One has to wonder whether one of Obama’s advisers, with an agenda of his or her own, did not whisper to the president, “Harry Reid is right.”
There are no winners on the pipeline issue, just as there were no winners on Yucca Mountain, except those who are celebrating in places like NRDC. On sparkling, organically grown apple juice, perchance? — For the Hearst-New York Times Syndicate

New Miracle Commodity: None Other than Bamboo

by Leave a Comment

In a time of new materials, a very old one is sneaking into our lives. You may have noticed that bamboo is making an appearance everywhere. There are bamboo floors – I hear there is one in the Holman Lounge of the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.— cutting boards and walking sticks.
But Troy Wiseman, a Chicago entrepreneur, sees future growth for bamboo in clothing, paper and activated charcoal — which has hundreds of industrial and medical uses. And he sees it as the next big, green forest products industry.
Bamboo is a grass whose fiber is similar to timber. After a six-year, initial growing period, it can be harvested yearly. It can be cultivated on land abused by clear-cutting, poor crop rotation and over-grazing. For the soil, bamboo is a healing grass.
The Chinese have known of the wonders of bamboo for centuries. They construct houses from it, eat it (Giant Pandas will eat nothing else), make baskets, chopsticks, hats and weapons from it. In Hong Kong, bamboo scaffolding is used to erect skyscrapers; in Mainland China, this practice has been limited to five stories.
Yet in the West, bamboo has traditionally been thought of as a curiosity, not a valuable agricultural commodity. Wiseman, who is chief executive officer of EcoPlanet Bamboo Group, aims to change that with large-scale bamboo production, which also has positive environmental and social impacts.
There are around 1,200 species of bamboo, and some have given it a bad name. Gardeners have reason to be wary of bamboo which, if they plant the wrong variety, can grow like kudzu and is a virulent invasive species.
Wiseman’s company plants better-behaved “clump” bamboo that is native to and approved by the country he is operating in. EcoPlanet Bamboo has established two plantations in Ghana, and one each in South Africa and Nicaragua. He is negotiating to make a big land purchase in Asia that will produce bamboo for clothing, paper and activated charcoal, and will convert the plant remains into fuel for electric generation.
Wiseman describes himself as a “capitalist with a conscience,” and has the enthusiasm of a tent preacher when it comes to the business opportunities and the social and environmental benefits of bamboo farming. For bamboo plantations, you ideally need hot, wet weather – the very areas where old-growth forests are most under threat.
He describes the financial rewards, the jobs for third-world laborers, and the saving of forests as “my three bottom lines.” But he is quick to emphasize, “Don’t get me wrong, we’re a capitalist company. We’re about profit, but there’s a right way to do it.”
As a businessman, Wiseman can claim a record. He told me in an interview that he had co-founded the global B.U.M. clothing line which went public, a private equity-based financial services firm, which financed, among other things, a company that made “turducken,”which is a dish consisting of a deboned chicken, stuffed into a deboned duck, which is stuffed into a deboned turkey.
A competitive wrestler in his youth, Wiseman says he is more excited about grappling with the challenges of bamboo than anything else. He says he has interest from a large number of Fortune 500 companies, including retailer Costco and paper giant Kimberly Clark. Bamboo has natural anti-bacterial properties, which is why bamboo cutting boards are desirable in the kitchen — my wife has one. But these properties, it is believed, will make bamboo fiber popular for bandages, diapers, tissues, sanitary napkins and underwear.
I have not knowingly worn bamboo-fiber clothes, but bamboo and I have a history. As a boy, before the days of hobby shops, I made kites using bamboo slats for the frames. Bamboo was light, strong and available. Little did I know that I was continuing a fine Chinese tradition of kite making and flying. My kites were rather primitive — bamboo frame, brown paper sail, and glue made with egg white or flour paste — but they flew.
Now I am captivated not by kites, but whether the world has overlooked a valuable and beneficial source of wood and fiber substitute. Troy Wiseman thinks so, and I am inclined to believe it. Incidentally, my bamboo walking stick (which cost $24 at Walgreens) is light, good-looking and maybe a trendsetter. — For the Hearst-New York Times Syndicate

 

The New Work: The Individual as Microbusiness

by Leave a Comment

The genius of Uber is dumbfounding. I’m not talking about what it pays its drivers (not enough), whether it’s putting taxis out of business (it is). I’m talking about the sheer brilliance of unleashing the value stored in the family car. Likewise, Airbnb which isn’t denting the hotels, but is causing tax collectors to go apoplectic.
These Internet companies are unleashing the value that families have had hidden in their driveways and spare bedrooms.What’s next? Your guess is as good as mine. If your guess is right, there are folk over at Google who’d like to talk to you.
Airbnb (which connects people looking for accommodation with those offering it in their homes) may be a tad more exciting than Uber (which puts private car owners in the transportation business) because it is catering to a specific traveler market. Hotels have become so unpredictable in their opportunistic pricing that private travelers are happy to leave them to business travelers who are less price-sensitive.
Then there’s GrubHub, which offers free online ordering from thousands of delivery and takeout restaurants. It may well be the next big thing in the market.
These are three examples of how the Internet, which giveth and taketh away, is reordering the economy. They’re beacons for how the economy might replace the jobs that are being lost to computers. They also offer extra income or full employment for people who don’t have marketable educations: driving a car and keeping a pretty home don’t require college degrees in science.
The nature of work is changing, and one of the consequences is that more of us are becoming self-employed: private contractors.
The Internet enables a large number of artisan skills to be marketed. I’ve just found an online advertisement for a dressmaker. Long before Walmart and “Project Runway,” dressmakers abounded. Women would ask their neighborhood dressmaker to “run up something” for a special occasion or whatever. Mass retailing, plus the difficulty of marketing beyond word-of-mouth, pretty well ended that, but it may come back. Now you may live in Atlanta, but you can order a bridal gown from an Etsy dressmaker in Seattle.
The Red Truck Bakery & Market, housed in an old gas station in Warrenton, Va., sends its Meyer Lemon and other goodies across the country. Artisanal baking meets the Internet.
Years ago, a friend of mine developed a knit teddy bear. It was a beautiful thing; tactile, safe for small children. I don’t recall whether my friend had gotten around to naming her stuffed bruin, but he was a darling — although I don’t know why stuffed bears have to be male.
Anyway the said unnamed, unsexed, stuffed bear didn’t make it into many young arms because of marketing. The big retailers didn’t want it. Things are very competitive in Bear Land, and Paddington Bear and company don’t want other teddy bears crashing their picnic on the store shelves.
That was more than 30 years ago. Today, Bear X could be sold on the Internet. Now I’d wager the big chain retailers would come begging — offering the little thing a whole shelf for itself.
The miracle of today is that it could happen differently. The concomitant fact is that we’re going to need more cottage industry and more self-employed contractors because the jobs of yesterday are disappearing, and the companies are less and less inclined to hire permanent staff.
Years ago, the jewelry business moved offshore; now it’s moved to American homes. It’s possible for a creative person to make jewelry at home and sell it online.
A new age of self-employment is at hand. Recently, I’ve worked with two inspiring millennials. One is a gifted and filmmaker, and the other a computer wizard. Both are making a living, and neither has given any serious thought to getting a job in the conventional way.
It’s not the age of small business, but microbusiness: the individual with something to sell, whether it’s artisanal furniture or a skill. The millennials seem to know this instinctively, the rest of us are learning it.
Want to hire a veteran journalist who works from home? Call me. — For the Hearst-New York Times Syndicate

It Isn’t Your Father’s Workplace Anymore

by Leave a Comment

One thing we think we know about the Republicans is that they take a dim view of waste, fraud and abuse. So how come the U.S. House of Representatives, in Republican hands, has voted 56 times to repeal or cripple the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare?

They’ve put forth this extraordinary effort despite an explicit veto threat from President Obama. Their repeated effort reminds one of Onan in the Bible, which politely says he spilled his seed on the ground.

It’s a waste of the legislative calendar and the talents of the House members. It’s a fraud because it gives the impression that the House is doing the people’s business when it is holding a protracted political rally. It’s an abuse of those who need health care because it introduces uncertainty into the system for providers, from the insurers to the home-care visitors.

It’s symptomatic of the political hooliganism which has taken over our politics, where there is little to choose between the protagonists.

Republican groups think that Obama is the doer of all evil in the nation – especially to the economy — and the world. Daily their Democratic counterparts gush vitriol against all the potential Republican presidential candidates, only pausing for an aside about the wickedness of Fox News.

Their common accusation is middle-class job woes. They’re on to something about jobs, but not the way the debate on jobs is being framed.

The political view of jobs is more jobs of the kind that we once thought of as normal and inevitable. But nature of work is changing rapidly, and it cries out for analysis.

The model of the corporation that employs a worker at reasonable wages which rise every year, toward a defined benefit pension, is over. Today’s businesses are moving toward a model of employment at will; the job equivalent of the just-in-time supply chain.

While more of us are becoming, in fact, self-employed, the structure of law and practice hasn’t been modified to accommodate the worker who may never know reliable, full-time employment.

The middle-class job market is being commoditized, as the pay-per-hour labor market includes everything from construction to network administration. Sports Illustrated — synonymous with great photography — has just fired all six of its staff photographers. Don’t worry the great plays will still be recorded and the Swimsuit Issue will still titillate, but the pictures will be taken by freelancers and amateurs.

Two forces are changing the nature of work. First, the reality that has devastated manufacturing: U.S. workers are in competition with the global labor pool, and business will always take low-cost option. If unemployment goes up in China, that will be felt in the U.S. workplace. Second is the march of technology; its disruptive impact is the new normal — accelerated change is here to stay.

All is not gloom. The trick is to let the old go – particularly difficult for Democrats — and to let the new in. There will be new entrepreneurs; more small, nimble businesses; and whole new directions of endeavor, from gastro-tourism to cottage-industry manufacturing, utilizing 3-D printing. Individuals will be free in a new way.

Government needs to think about this and devise a new infrastructure that recognizes that the nature of work is changing. The emerging new economy should have simplified taxes and Social Security payments for the self-employed; portable, affordable health care; and universal catastrophe insurance, so that those who are not under an employer umbrella can benefit from the equivalent of workers’ compensation. The self-employed, rightly, fear the day they can’t work.

Rugged individualism has a new face. The political class needs to look and see the new workplace. — For the Hearst-New York Times Syndicate

Lackluster City? Get a Brand

by 1 Comment

If your city is mostly famous for being between two other cities, if its main claim to fame is “It’s a great place to raise children,” then it’s time for your city fathers to take a course in branding.
Cities that prosper — that bring in company headquarters, tourists and where the crazy rich want be — have to have distinguished brands.
New York’s brand is glorious excess. It has the brand of ever higher, stranger skyscrapers. The world’s most successful media mogul, Rupert Murdoch, has just plunked down $57.2 million for what looks to be the world’s most lonely living space: the top four floors of a 60-story, bronze-and-glass building of a kind that is now transforming the Manhattan skyline. Take a small plot of land, build until what you get is slender tower that defies nature and looks as though its purpose is to challenge a strong wind.
Murdoch’s aerie has glass on four sides, and he can see forever, at the least until other towers rise up. If you want to spy on him, you will have to do it by drone. His own paparazzi might try to get a picture using a drone, but where would they publish it?
If you have a few million to spare you can still get in the East 23rd Street building. But those that would make an eagle jealous have gone to Murdoch. Most of us would be scared up there: a new take on “Naked and Afraid” because without neighbors, there is no need to wear clothes.
Cities in the United States that have done the branding thing right are New Orleans, jazz and food; San Francisco, cable cars and attitude; Boston, higher education and hospitals (eds and meds); and Chicago, wind and the uber-hub airport. Washington is a special case: great museums, the White House and the Capitol, and palpable delusions of importance.
The branding ace, running in front worldwide, is London. The Romans gave it a head start, but it was not until the Swinging Sixties that London became a destination for the globe. You would think that the place had enough branding with the old features: Tower Bridge, the Tower, the Houses of Parliament and Buckingham Palace, plus the Changing of the Guard.
But no. London keeps adding dizzying new features to its brand superiority. There is the Tate Modern, an art gallery in an old power station; the London Eye, a Ferris wheel that has captured world attention and city imitators; a bridge across the Thames River that wobbles, and now a new bridge is planned with gardens and shops on it. Then there are the taxis — black boxes, that remind you where you are in case you have overlooked the big red buses.
The current mayor of London, Boris Johnson (who has branded himself as a possible prime minister) has been keen to preserve and protect the London brand by insisting on preserving the double-decker buses, distinctive taxis and other expensive city bric-a-brac, because it is a hell of an investment.
Sure Paris has the Eiffel Tower, but it is aging. Rome has the Coliseum — talk about aging. And St. Petersburg has the Winter Palace and the Hermitage. But for city branding, London is in front and pulling away, as the Brits exploit the cash value of differentness.
Providence and Baltimore are two cities of which I am particularly fond. But I would urge the city leadership in both places to get a brand, a trademark. It pays. Rides (London Eye, Eiffel Tower elevators, the San Francisco cable cars) are sure winners. Could I suggest an amphibious train across Baltimore Harbor, and the mother of all rollercoasters – big, but not scary — in Providence?
Like London and New York, these days you have got to think big in city branding, or you will miss the incredible fun and profit of a city being silly.
Frivolity pays, ask London’s Boris Johnson — and share a thought for Rupert Murdoch, stuck up in the sky. — For the Hearst-New York Times Syndicate

The Uber Effect on Electricity

by 1 Comment

Leon Trotsky said, “You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.” The same thing might be said about disruptive technologies.
The U.S.. electric system, for example, may not be interested in disruptive technology, but disruptive technology is interested in it. What Uber and Lyft have done to the taxi industry worldwide is just beginning to happen to the electricity industry; and it could shock consumers – particularly the less affluent – as surely as though they had stuck their finger in an electrical outlet.
The disruptive revolution is not only happening here, but also in Europe, as Marc Boillot, senior vice president at Electricite de France (EDF), the giant French utility, writes in a new book.
Ironically, here in the United States, disruption of the otherwise peaceful world of electric generation and sale last year was a bumper one for electric stocks because of their tradition of paying dividends at a time when bond yields were low.
The first wave of disruption to electric generation has been a technology as benign as solar power units on rooftops, much favored by governments and by environmentalists as a green source of electricity. For the utilities, these rooftop generators are a threat to the integrity of the electrical grid. To counter this, utilities would like to see the self-generators pay more for the upkeep of the grid and the convenience it affords them.
Think of the grid as a series of spider webs built around utility companies serving particular population centers, and joined to each other so they can share electricity, depending on need and price.
Enter the self-generating homeowner, who by law is entitled to sell excess production back to the grid, or to buy on the grid when it is very cold or the sun isn’t shining, as at night. The system of selling back to the electric company is known as net metering.
Good deal? Yes, for the homeowner who can afford to install a unit or lease one from one of a growing number of companies that provide that service. Lousy deal for the full-time electricity customer who rents or lives in an apartment building.
There’s the rub: Who pays the cost of maintaining the grid while the rooftop entrepreneur uses it at will? Short answer: everyone else.
In reality, the poor get socked. Take Avenue A with big houses at one end and apartments and tenements at the other. The big houses — with their solar panels and owners' morally superior smiles — are being subsidized by the apartments and tenements. They have to pay to keep the grid viable, while the free-standing house – it doesn't have to be a mansion — gets a subsidy.
It's a thorny issue, akin to the person who can't use Uber or Lyft because he doesn't have a credit card or a smartphone, and has to hope that traditional taxi service will survive.
The electric utilities, from the behemoths to the smallest municipal distributor, see the solution in an equity fee for the self-generating customer's right to come on and off the grid, and for an appreciable difference between his selling and buying price. Solar proponents say, not fair: Solve your own problems. We are generating clean electricity and our presence is a national asset.
EDF's Boillot sees the solution in the utilities’ own technological leap forward: the so-called smart grid. This is the computerization of the grid so that it is more finely managed, waste is eliminated, and pricing structures for homes reflect the exact cost at the time of service. His advice was eagerly sought when he was in Washington recently, promoting his book.
While today’s solar may be a problem for the utilities, tomorrow’s may be more so. Homeowners who can afford it may be able to get off the grid altogether by using the battery in an all-electric car to tide them over during the sunless hours.
The industry is not taking this lying down: It's talking to the big solar firms, the regulators and, yes, to Elon Musk, founder of electric-car maker Tesla Motors. He may be the threat and he may be the savior; those all-electric cars will need a lot of charging, and stations for that are cropping up. There’s a ray of sunshine for the utilities, but it's quite a way off. Meanwhile, the rooftop disruption is here and now. — For the Hearst-New York Times Syndicate

The Shame of Transportation: Safety

by 1 Comment

The long history of transportation also has been a history of a struggle for safety. It's not over.
The recent crash of an AsiaAir Airbus A320, with the loss of 162 lives, highlights one of aviation’s lasting shames: The reluctance of air carriers to invest in safety unless they're forced to do so. While no lives would've been saved in the immediate crash, lives are saved over time from the information contained in the so-called black boxes – the cockpit voice recorder and the all-important flight data recorder.
After spending hundreds of millions of dollars, both of the AirAsia jet's black boxes have been recovered in the Java Sea. There is technology that would allow all aircraft to have cockpit conversations and flight data recorded on the ground throughout every flight. But the inhibitions are always the same: blind fear of cost and inertia.
One of the worst examples of this inhibition was the hardening of airliner cockpit doors. Airlines should've put locks and bars on cockpit doors when the first hijackings occurred in the 1960s. Many lives — and possibly all of the lives on 9/11 – could've saved, but governments dithered and airlines worried about cost.
In Washington, D.C., one life has just been lost in a subway incident. Shortly after leaving a city station, a Virginia-bound train came to a halt in a tunnel which began filling with smoke. Passengers in the darkened cars were choking and panicking; some lost consciousness and many were taken to D.C. hospitals.
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said it was an “electrical arcing event,” involving cables that power the third rail. Shamefully, there appeared to be inadequate training of personnel on the system and poor response from both the District of Columbia fire department and the fire officials on the system. Immediate question: If the electrical arcing problem was known, why wasn’t there an engineering fix? Cost, perhaps?
Every day on subway systems around the world, tens of millions of passengers descend into the ground in the belief that no expense has been spared to ensure that they emerge at their destination. In Washington, the risk was known and not apparently addressed.
There are millions of years of subway operating experience. Is there a global operating safety organization? Hopefully the NTSB, one of the more impressive government agencies, will point the way.
But is pointing the way enough? For decades, the NTSB has highlighted issues involving the safety of buses and little has happened.
More and more Americans are riding buses, which are marvels of comfort and can be the most efficient and economical way to travel between cities. With restrooms, wi-fi and reclining seats, buses are mode of transportation to be reckoned with.
But are buses as safe as possible in the event of an accident? Seat belts have not been installed and roofs have not been hardened against rollovers, which the NTSB has recommended for years.
I thought about this on a wintry night recently, when I packed a friend into a bus traveling from Providence, RI, to New York City. One had to wonder about the driver, who was upset about passengers who didn't have printed copies of their electronic tickets and about all the heavy baggage that he had to load by himself. He had much to worry about before getting behind the wheel on an icy, windy night for a four-hour drive.
It would've been more reassuring if the vehicle had been equipped with rollover protection and the passengers had seat belts to buckle up for safety. Fate, we know, does not like to be tempted. Yet thousands of buses take to the roads daily without being a safe as they could be.
Industries fight safety or environmental protection because of a blind fear of cost. But in safety and environmental protection, the cost is always higher for not doing what has to be done than for doing it. Those who provide transportation in the air, on the surface or under the ground, need goading to do the right thing. — For the Hearst-New York Times Syndicate

The Loud Silence from Islam

by 2 Comments

A dark shadow passed over Paris, the City of Light, on Wednesday, January 7.. Well-organized, well-trained killers murdered 13 people in the name of Allah. As Shakespeare said 500 years earlier, about the heinous murder of King Duncan by Macbeth, “O horror, horror, horror! Tongue nor heart cannot conceive nor name thee.”
Indeed, recent horrors in the name of Allah have been so gruesome it is impossible to conceive the mutilated reason, the perverted concept of God’s will, and the unvarnished rage that has subverted the once admired religion.
The killers are ruthless and depraved, but those who inspire them are evil and those who tolerate them are guilty.
In 2005, when a Danish newspaper published 12 cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed and riots were stirred up against the publishers, a meeting was arranged at a community room in the basement of The Washington Times. It was not organized by the newspaper but, as I recall, by an interfaith group. There were several fringe “let’s be nice” speakers before the main event.
The main event was the Danish ambassador and, to a lesser extent, myself. The ambassador spoke about life in Denmark and what the Danish government would do to understand and listen to the concerns of the Muslim community. My role was to defend and explain the Western concept of freedom of speech and the place satire. The overflow audience, which by dress and appearance was dominated by emigrants from Pakistan, was implacable.
I have spoken to some hostile audiences in my time, but this one was special: No compromise, no quarter. Nor interest in cultures other than their own. Ugly and insatiable rage came out in their questions.
They did not want to know about the values of the country that had given their brethren sanctuary, education, healthcare and a decent life. My audience only wanted to know why the blasphemers in Denmark and Norway (the cartoons were reprinted there) were not being punished. For good measure, they wanted to know why the American media was so committed to heresy against Islam. No thought that they had moved voluntarily to the United States and were enjoying three of its great freedoms: freedom to assemble, freedom of speech and freedom of religion.
They wanted absolute subjection of all Western values to the dictates of Islam. They had been fired up and they were angry, self-righteous and obdurate.
In 2009, I was invited to a conference of world religions in Astana, Kazakhstan. There were maybe 100 religions present, but at a featured session the conference degenerated into an Islamic diatribe against sexuality and the treatment of women (mostly in advertising) in the West. No dialogue. No discussion. Absolute certainty.
I mention this because of the reaction to the barbarity in Paris, and to a string of other barbarous murders across the world, from Muslims has been so muted.
“Je Suis Charlie” said millions of people in dozens of countries in sympathy with the murdered journalists and with their fight for press freedom. From Muslim leaders in the West, including the Council on American-Islamic Relations in the United States, there were statements of condemnation but no sense of outrage. From the bulk of the followers of Islam there was nothing. There never is. Not when innocent children are shot in their schools, or when aid workers are beheaded, or when or when satirical journalists are executed. The Muslim multitudes have acquiesced to evil.
When will those who believe deeply in Islam take to the streets to denounce the excesses of the few? After the horror in Paris, British Muslims took to the BBC to mildly criticize the murders, but more to vigorously demand a better deal for Muslims in Britain.
The medieval certainty of the leadership of Islam is endorsed by the silence of its congregants. The silence of the millions gives a kind of absolution to the extremists, intoxicated with fervor and hate. It will all go on until the good Muslims stand up and are heard. The guilt of silence hangs over Islam. — For the Hearst-New York Times Syndicate