Unique email users in August (thousand):
Facebook: 69,256, 348% change from a year earlier
Gmail: 82,921, 64%
MySpace: 105,716, 33%
Hotmail: 255,342, 9%
Yahoo Mail: 254,942, -1%
AOL email: 49,561, -9%
US game console sales in August:
Nintendo Wii: 404,000
Microsoft XBox 360: 277,000
Sony PlayStation 3: 131,000
lawyers making $50000 a year? Complaining about their law education was a total waste? That might be true if the JD was coming from a second-tier law school with not so outstanding academic performance.
The first parking meter was installed in 1935 in Oklahoma City. Before that, parking on the street is free in cities. However, as more cars pouring in, it’s becoming chaotic. Finding a parking space on the street is often impossible. Some merchants deliberately parked their cars in front of competitors’ stores to stop costumers dropping by. Large cities began banning street parking at downtown areas. But the regulation brought severe damage to the business district. Shoppers wouldn’t even walk a few blocks from their cars to a store. In 1932, the Oklahoma City tried to figure a way out this chaos. A local newspaper editor, Carl Magee invented the park-o-meter. First meter was installed in July, 1935. People found it hard to believe that they had to pay to park on the street, after they had paid all kinds of taxes to the government. Probably for fun and to protest, two couples set up a folding table and four chairs in a parking space, deposited a nickel in the meter and played a rubber of bridge.
How the deal get done in private equity buyouts?
Rooted in Hinduism, India’s complex caste system includes 3000 castes and 25000 sub-castes, all traditionally related to occupation. They fall under four basic “varnas” or categories:
I have never imaged people are still debating about DDT, something disappeared for about 20 years as I remember. Well, I don’t know malaria is still killing thousands of people in poor countries, either.
DDT is the first modern pesticide and was used with great effect to combat mosquitoes spreading malaria, typhus, and other insect-borne human diseases after the discovery in early World War II. With the help of DDT, US and Europe eradicted malaria by 1960. In 1962, American biologist and environmentalist Rachel Carson published Silent Spring, which questioned DDT for the environmental impacts and human health concerns. US banned DDT usage in 1972 after the large public outcry stirred by the book. Many countries around the world followed the ban.
DDT is still the single most effective pesticide to fight malaria, the mosquito-borne disease. And it’s one of the cheapest, too. In 1960s, Uganda tested DDT in the Kanungu district and reduced malaria by 98%. But the poor country lacked the resources and public health infrastructure to sustain the program. Now, with the help from foreign organizations, Uganda resumed the DDT spraying operation in households and reduced the malaria parasite dropped from 30% to 3% of local populations in the test regions.
The author is complaining that international environmentalists are undermining Uganda’s anti-malaria effect by discouraging G-8 leaders from supporting DDT usage.
Update: According to National Geographic Magazine, malaria is the leading disease killing human being, more than HIV-related disease and cancer. In Africa, 3000 people die everyday from malaria, primarily pregnant mothers and children under five.
Take a look at the lives of the rich:
“The other day we saw a mouse in the house. Before, I would have just gotten a broom and gotten rid of the thing. But now things are different. I e-mailed the household manager. He called the vendor, a pest-control firm, and the pest-control firm caught the mouse. Then the household manager directed two other staff members to dispose of the mouse. That’s five people to catch a mouse, instead of a broom. It all seemed normal at the time. But then I thought about it, and I wondered, how did our lives get like this?”
– quote from WSJ Friday, June 1, 2007 W2
Auto makers are trying very hard to get better fuel economy out of their cars. They are promoting the so called sub-compact cars, like Toyota Yaris, Honda Fit and soon-to-be-shipped Smart fortwo from Chrysler. They are advertising alternative energy. Toyota’s hybrid technology is used extensively on the compact, standard and SUV models. Ford is shipping its hybrid sedans and SUV’s now. You may think that the makers are getting better fuel economy than ever before. But, surprisingly (at least to me), they did a much better job twenty or thirty years ago. In 1980’s compact cars could easily get average 50 plus miles per gallon. Cars in 80s performed even better than today’s most advanced hybrid cars on the road.
The magic of the astonishing fuel efficieny is simple, a smaller, less powerful engine for a lighter, smaller car. While wonderful technical advances in internal combustion engines have been made in the last two decades, most of these efforts focused on horsepower increass instead of fuel efficiency improvement. Can you imagine a BMW with 75 horsepower? That’s what a BMW 315 coupe has in 1979. Today, BMW 3 series coupe base model has a 230hp engine in it. While the now car can easily smoke its old brothers thanks to a better and larger engine, we are not gaining any fuel economy here. Besides the pursuit of power and speed, today’s drivers pay much more attention to vehicle safety than before while shopping a car. The safety issue steers the auto makers to make bigger and heavier cars now. Today’s Civic is 3 feet longer and 900 pounds heavier than its ancestor in 1986. You can hardly emphasize the importance of safety, but safety comes with a price. Traditionally, Americans believe bigger-is-better when shopping for a car. They might baby cry when gas price soars, but they tend to forget what happened right after price goes down and rush to trade-in their compact cars bought because of gas prices.
Another surprising story on yesterday’s paper is that flight time is actually getting longer than before. With better technology in communication, mechanical design and engine design, it’s natural to assume that we can fly from point A to point B in less time compared to ten years ago. However, the truth is, airplane can fly faster, but the sky has never been more crowd. Just like traffic jam on the highway, air traffics are heavier and the flight time is longer. This not only annoys travelers but also hurts the airlines, badly.
General Motors Corp. is investing heavily in the development of next generation fuel-efficient alternatives to current car engines. The concept car, Chevrolet Volt, which uses a huge T-shape battery pack to drive the wheels, was shown in the last Detroit Auto Show. Now GM is hiring as many as 400 technical experts to work on alternative fuel technology, hoping to turn Volt to a production car in three to four years.
The Volt does have a small gas engine, but to recharge the battery instead of driving the wheels. GM estimates that the fuel efficiency of Volt can reach 150 miles per gallon, which is about three times higher than that of current hybrid cars from Toyota.
While they are putting a lot of resources into the innovation, GM executes are conscious that the vehicle, even if they are able to put it in the production line, may not make money for the company, at least not in the recent future. GM is seeking a “halo” product that will burnish the auto maker’s overall reputation as an environmentally friendly corporation, and more importantly, not merely as a maker of gas guzzlers. They want consumers to think of fuel economy when they see a GM product, just as what they perceive Toyota cars now. As the gas price reaches record high in recent months, alternative fuel innovation seems more urgent than ever, especially for the struggling Detroit auto makers.
GM’s green bet is not riskless. The company is still discussing with battery suppliers to develop the vehicle’s most critical component. Even though it has no guarantee that the battery will be ready, GM decided to start designing other parts of the car and the manufacturing process to produce them. GM is desperate to lead and cash on the new technology this time.
PS. It’s interesting to read the story and Businessweek’s recent cover story about innovation. Businessweek says now CEO’s are generally more cautious about innovations now compared to two or three years ago. They start to realize innovations are risky, costly and quite often unproductive. Persistence is not necessarily negative. After a somewhat unsuccessful “Live Green, Go Yellow” campaign for their E85 ethanol cars, it will be interesting to see what happens with GM’s innovating electric car.
