Monday, October 21, 2002

[Colin Glassey 5:40 PM] News blurbs: • Vladimir Kramnik has ended up in a tie with Deep Fritz, in the just-concluded match between a chess champion and a computer program. Though Kramnik started out strong (winning two games and two draws) he got tired and made, in his own words "mistakes" which cost him two games. The final two games were drawn so the match ends in a tie, 4 point to 4 points. It is not obvious to me that humans will ever beat computers in chess again. • A really long-lived battery based on a facinating use of radio-active decay that is turned into mechanical energy. See here for the article. To me this represents one of the most interesting transformations of radioactivity into useable energy that I have ever heard of. Congrats to Amil Lal of Cornell! 5:43:18 PM     [Colin Glassey 3:30 PM] I liked Paul Krugman's essay in this weeks New York Times Magazine. Some points: I liked America in the 1960s. I liked the idea that the heads of companies in United States were just faceless men doing their jobs and getting paid somewhat more than the guys down on the floor. Call me a socialist but I think it is reasonable to put an upper cap on what officers of corporations can make in compensation. The thought of Ken Lay and Dennis Kozlowski earning 500 or 800 times what their base employee was earning per year I find reprehensible. Had they no shame? Bottom line: No CEO is worth 500 workers. Take Bill Gates (or Larry Elison, though Elison pays himself more than Bill). Here is a man who built a company from the ground up. He pays himself a mere $200,000 per year. Sure he is the richest man in the world but that is because he hung onto his 50% share of Microsoft stock. Its his company. Compare this behavior to some of these other examples of modern corporate rectitude. Build your company from the ground up, hang onto your stock ownership, pay yourself very little. That is the right way to behave. By contast, if you are just hired into some existing company to run things, you should be paid more than the people in the mail room but not 500 TIMES what they earn. You shouldn't be getting hundreds of millions of dollars worth of stock options. You shouldn't be getting loans from the company (which oddly enough always seem to be forgiven). I've worked in the high-tech industry for nearly 20 years. CEOs get paid a lot to do a reasonably fun job: make decisions. Some choices are more fun to make than others but basically people come to you with choices and you pick one. Its a job, someone needs to do it, its worth it to get good people to do the job but is one CEO worth 500 people? No way. 3:53:02 PM     [Colin Glassey 3:15 PM] I'm (A) not surprised that North Korea turns out to have been lying when they signed an agreement which prohibited them from working on nuclear weapons (B) not that worked up about it YET. North Korea hasn't attacked any other country since 1950 (i.e. its been 50+ years now). North Korea hasn't enganged in acts of terrorism for at least 5 years (since the last plane was hijacked). North Korea has recently admitted it kidnaped some Japanese citizens and even allowed a few to go back to Japan (briefly). Is North Korea a bad country? Yes. Is North Korea an immediate threat to its neighbors with a ruthless warmonger of a leader? No. Is it a country we can trust and negotiate with? I'd say the record is pretty clear on this point: No. Is North Korea a country we can safely ignore for another 5 years? Seems reasonable to me. We, the United States, South Korea, Japan and Russia will have to bring North Korea into the fold of civilizated nations at some point. But it doesn't have to be done instantly. 3:23:48 PM     [Colin Glassey 2:30 PM] Some funny commentary and bloging here at Capitol Influx. Here is a sample: To: All Capital Influx Employees From: The Management Date: October 6, 2002 Re: Plane privileges It has come to the management’s attention that someone has been using the Gulfstream without signing it out. To: Capital Influx Management From: HR Date: October 6, 2002 Re: Internal communications In an effort to be sure we are as cutting-edge as possible with our internal communications, please refer to this slang dictionary [attached] when looking for just the right phrase. To: Company Peeps From: The Chief Date: October 6, 2002 Re: Operational Shit Listen, bitches. If you’re gonna use the ‘stream, sign it the fuck out, yo? Sorry. This CNN thing is still cracking me up. 2:31:27 PM     [Colin Glassey 1:30 PM] Here is a good essay by Max Boot of the Weekly Standard. He attacks the notion that peace can be created as part of a process and harasses the Clinton administration for their peace deal with North Korea. A reasonable critique I must say in light North Korea's admission that they have unilaterally ignored the 1994 deal negotiated with the United States and Japan. 1:43:05 PM     [Colin Glassey 12 noon] Theophrastus on the next 100 years. - I believe that in 100 years (approximately) the idea of a sovereign, independent, nation will have been replaced by a working world government with authority over the entire Earth. The reason for this is (to my mind) blindingly simple: global problems demand global solutions. The trend towards larger and larger political units, started with the modern age in Europe around 1500. The creation of France as a single nation, instead of a collection of small noble domains forced its neighboring states to respond in a similar fashion. By 1870 Germany and Italy had emerged as nations, joining France, England, Austria, Spain, Sweden, Denmark, and Russia. As these nations exerted power beyond Europe into other landmasses, new nations throughout the world were created, either in response to the threat, or directly by the Europeans. As a result of the cataclysm of World War I and World War II, even more nations were created and larger super-national entities were born, most notably the United Nations, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the European Union, the World Trade Organization, NATO, and (for a time) the Warsaw Pact. This process, the creation of new nations and new super-national entities, is not finished. For example: the African Union (inspired by the European Union) was formed in 2002 and Scotland is very likely to achieve full independence by 2010. As of 2002 we live in a world where goods are routinely produced in one place and shipped to every other nation in the world. Examples: toys from Canton, software from Seattle, movies from Hollywood, DRAM from Taiwan. Thanks to 50 years of global peace and stability international trade is the norm for every major company no matter where it is based. The rise and extent of globalization is so well documented I see no need to belabor the fact that it exists. What I do feel is needed is to point out where this globalization is leading: one system of governance which has authority over the entire world. I argue that this is necessary and it is a good thing. Consider some of the problems we face: The leader of a guerilla army based in central Colombia extorts 50 million dollars from some local drug lords. He then takes this money and deposits in a bank in the Cayman Islands, a sovereign government with its own very loose banking laws. Using this money he now orders 10,000 pounds of C-4 plastic explosive from a Ukrainian explosives company. The Ukraine has a corrupt government and the laws are so poorly written that it isn’t even clear that such a sale is illegal under Ukrainian law. Armed with this new C-4, the guerilla band is able to blow up the police station and mayor’s office in a nearby town killing 30 or so people and allowing the guerilla army to expand its zone of control in Colombia. The Japanese Kiretsu (a complex set of interlocking businesses which seem to all own each other thanks to circular stock-ownership) owns a set of giant fishing boats. Every three months the boats dock at Tokyo and unload their catch of fish that have been scooped out of the Pacific Ocean. For the last ten years the catch of the best, most profitable fish has been declining so the fishing boats have been ordered to stay out longer and sail further to obtain more fish. Only a few scientists have put 2 and 2 together and figured out that the fish population in the Pacific Ocean is being destroyed by overfishing by the Japanese Kiretsu, the Chilean fishing fleet, the American fishing boats, the New Zealanders, the Koreans, and the Chinese. But since no one owns the Pacific Ocean, no one is in a position to tell any of these fishing boats to stop fishing for 5 years so the populations can recover. Instead, a few years later the fish population will be wiped out and most of the fishing boats will be left to rust in the harbor. People will wonder in amazement that even the Pacific Ocean can be over-fished. The people in Shanghai, having earned a lot of money over the last twenty years, now want to ride cars instead of bikes. Because they are still fairly poor in comparison to the Japanese or Americans, they can’t afford the state-of-art in non-polluting engines with catalytic converters. Instead they can barely afford smoggy inefficient engines, which are built in vast numbers. The streets of Shanghai are not built for 10 million cars and monumental traffic jams are part of daily life. The smog is thankfully blown out to sea so Shanghai stays livable. But the smog doesn’t disappear. It drifts in a vast cloud over the sea and some of it goes north, passing over South Korea and Japan. Ozone levels start exceeding safe levels in the cities of Pusan and Osaka even though the cars there meet strict pollution controls and industries have long since added scrubbers to their exhaust stacks. How are any of these problems going to be solved? I repeat again, global problems demand global solutions. More later... 11:56:08 AM

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