Bam!

I visited the Fancy Food Trade Show today in NY. I was served a small cup of pasta and sauce by none other than Emeril Lagasse. I wish I'd thought to take a picture.

Cap & Trade $175/household/year

The Waxman-Markey bill which would establish a carbon cap and trade system in the US is coming up for a vote fairly soon. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that it will cost on average $175 per household.

By annually reducing the supply of these permits, the cap-and-trade legislation written by House Democrats Henry Waxman of California and Ed Markey of Massachusetts would lower the limit on greenhouse gases to 17 percent less than 2005 levels by 2020, according to Bloomberg News.

The CBO analysis estimates that the legislation will cost the richest U.S. households $245 a year, and the poorest will see gains of $40 a year. [environmentalleader.com]

Is it worth it? Is it worth it if we can prevent massive global displacement? One of the front page articles in this weekend's FT, contained the following:

Estimates of the number of environmental refugees in 2050, when the global population is expected to peak at 9 billion and the planet is forecast to be in the throes of a 2°C-or-more temperature rise, vary between 50 million and 1 billion people. But the most commonly repeated number – included in Britain’s 2006 Stern Review – is between 200 and 250 million, or around 10 times the number of refugees and internally displaced persons in the world today.

History of Coffee

We sit down to a cup every morning and perhaps enjoy a few more throughout the day. Here's the backstory with some juicy tidbits:

The modern coffee drink was invented at the end of 15th century, when roasting and crushing the coffee beans over open fires before extracting them with hot water became the accepted methodology. The Turks claimed coffee to be an aphrodisiac and husbands kept their wives well supplied. If the husband did not supply coffee, it was a legitimate cause for a wife to divorce. Coffeehouses became the social centers, competing with mosques for attendance. As gathering places for political activity and sedition, they banned several times over the next few decades, but they kept reappearing. Eventually a solution was found when coffeehouses and coffee were taxed...

At one point in the mid-16th century, Sultan Murat IV closed them all; they were to remain dark until the last part of the century. But as soon as the Sultan’s edict went into effect, the coffeehouse owners packed up and re-opened their businesses elsewhere, including Venice, Greece and the European continent. Ever notice how Greek coffee is exactly the same as Turkish coffee? The Viennese, not enjoying the grounds in their coffee, invented filtration...

Nevertheless, the Arabians closely guarded their coffee production in order to maintain their complete monopoly. Government policy forbade export of any fertile beans, so that coffee could not be cultivated anywhere else. (The coffee bean is the seed of the coffee tree, but when stripped of its outer layers it becomes infertile.) The Dutch eventually acquired some live shrubs or beans in 1616 and brought them back to Holland where they were grown in greenhouses. Another story tells of a Moslem pilgrim from India named Baba Budan, who secreted seeds out of Arabia in 1650 and planted them in the hills in Mysore, India where they flourished...

The Arabs were known to drink so much coffee that the Christian church denounced it as “the hellish black brew.” But Pope Clement VIII found it so delicious that he baptized it and made it a Christian beverage, saying “coffee is so delicious, it would be a pity to let the infidels have exclusive use of it.”

At first coffee was mainly sold by lemonade vendors and was believed to have medicinal qualities. Coffeehouses appeared as meeting places for men. The first opened in Oxford in 1650, in London in 1652, in Paris in 1672, in Vienna in 1675. The first coffeehouse opened in Venice in 1683... But then, coffee houses spread quickly across Europe, becoming centers for intellectual exchange. Many great minds of Europe met in the forum, over the beverage.

The largest insurance company in the world, Lloyd’s of London, began as a coffeehouse. It was started in 1688 by Edward Lloyd, who prepared lists of the ships that his customers had insured.

What would Kim Jong-un do?

Here's a nice examination of how the world might look to the North Korean heir-apparent:

But, if one wants to anticipate and understand the opponent's next move, it's useful to peer at the board from his perspective. And a glance at that board reveals that North Korea's nuclear weapons keep its leader out of that rat-hole, the gallows rope off his neck, and his children alive.

There is always the chance that Kim Jong-il's successor will be a historic reformer who decides to end the tyranny he has inherited, turning over his country and his family's future to the South, praying that its mercy keeps him off the gallows. But more likely, he'll just take over the family business of running North Korea. For those who wonder how he might think about nuclear weapons, look at that chessboard from Pyongyang's perspective and ask yourself: What would your move be?

Happiness in Business

This was developed for entrepreneurs building their companies, but I think it is applicable for everyone.

Clothes Origami

I can't figure out how this works, but its amazing.

Thoughts on a Fuel Tax

I want to thank my faithful readers for responding to a post from a few weeks ago where I announced I was in favor of a fuel tax. In case you haven't looked at the comments, I'm copying them here:

1. A very sensible solution if you live in one of the big eastern cities with lots of available public transportation. Quite a different story if you live here in the west, where our cities grew in the era of the automobile and public transportation is practically non-existent.

2. I,too, listened to that NPR story and found it convincing. Then again, there is no reliable public transportation around me, so I have to drive to work. What happens to those who can least afford the tax? They can do without other "sins", but not their paycheck.

3. So how are you going to feel when you have to pay more for all your goods and services? Merchandise arrives in stores with the help of gasoline. The stores aren't going to absorb that cost for you. And service providers...plumbers, electricians, housekeepers...are sure to add on a fuel surcharge. So even though you are an urban dweller, don't think you wouldn't be affected.

Homage to simplicity

It seems that it's the fashion in these lean times to discuss how much richer one's life is without money. This is quite a delightful example by Pico Iyer, who is one of my favorite travel writers:

I still live in the vicinity of Kyoto, in a two-room apartment that makes my old monastic cell look almost luxurious by comparison. I have no bicycle, no car, no television I can understand, no media — and the days seem to stretch into eternities, and I can’t think of a single thing I lack.

I’m no Buddhist monk, and I can’t say I’m in love with renunciation in itself, or traveling an hour or more to print out an article I’ve written, or missing out on the N.B.A. Finals. But at some point, I decided that, for me at least, happiness arose out of all I didn’t want or need, not all I did. And it seemed quite useful to take a clear, hard look at what really led to peace of mind or absorption (the closest I’ve come to understanding happiness). Not having a car gives me volumes not to think or worry about, and makes walks around the neighborhood a daily adventure. Lacking a cell phone and high-speed Internet, I have time to play ping-pong every evening, to write long letters to old friends and to go shopping for my sweetheart (or to track down old baubles for two kids who are now out in the world).

When the phone does ring — once a week — I’m thrilled, as I never was when the phone rang in my overcrowded office in Rockefeller Center. And when I return to the United States every three months or so and pick up a newspaper, I find I haven’t missed much at all. While I’ve been rereading P.G. Wodehouse, or “Walden,” the crazily accelerating roller-coaster of the 24/7 news cycle has propelled people up and down and down and up and then left them pretty much where they started. “I call that man rich,” Henry James’s Ralph Touchett observes in “Portrait of a Lady,” “who can satisfy the requirements of his imagination.” Living in the future tense never did that for me. [NY Times]

General Motors Reinvention Ad

I think this ad is a fascinating approach to their crisis. I suppose it's mostly about reassuring the car-buying public that the company is not going into liquidation and has plans for the future.

Any thoughts?

GM Reinvention Commercial (SPOOF)

And at least one person's response...