Parable of the Stones...

Here's a story about Steve Jobs that I hadn't heard before.  Read through the italicized part for the parable.

That parable resonates strongly with me.  Ideas are worth very little by themselves, and they're not the hard part of creating a product.  It's the execution that's hard – all the myriad of things that have to happen for a great product to be shipped.  Generally speaking, when you look back at the totality of what it took to ship a great product, the original idea for the product will seem like an insignificant part of the overall effort.  The parable is about the team that takes an idea to a beautifully executed product...

Green Cars...

Many people are attracted to either all-electric or hybrid cars because they believe they are helping the environment by doing so – they are “green” cars.  There are other reasons as well, but for many buyers of “green” cars, their green-ness is the major factor.

However, when you take into account the additional carbon footprint and other pollutants produced in the manufacture of both hybrid and all-electric cars, and the indirect carbon footprint and pollution increase from all-electric cars (because they're recharged with electricity produced most often in a non-nuclear power plant), then they don't look quite so green.  Over the average lifetime of a green car, both the carbon footprint and the pollution are worse than the average gasoline-powered car – and there's nothing on the horizon that would change that.  Massive conversion of power plants to nuclear or fusion power would help a lot, but that's not very likely.  Massive conversion to wind or solar doesn't work because there is no known way to store power produced during the daytime for use at night.  Lithium mining is notoriously polluting and energy intensive, but no replacement technology for lithium-ion batteries is even in the laboratory, much less in production.

None of this information is a secret, nor is it hidden or hard to access.  Do a little googling and you can find all you want.  Green cars are a myth (albeit a popular myth!).  They really should be called brown cars.

Bjorn Lomberg (of The Skeptical Environmentalist fame) has a nice summary of this in today's Wall Street Journal)...

A Tale of Two Bridges...

From Pieter Hintgens' blog:

Two old engineers were talking of their lives and boasting of their greatest projects. One of the engineers explained how he had designed the largest bridge ever made.

"We built it across a river gorge," he told his friend. "It was wide and deep. We spent two years studying the land, and choosing designs. Then we hired the best people and designed the bridge, which took another five years. We contracted the largest engineering firms to build the structures, the towers, the tollbooths, and the roads that would connect the bridge to the main highways. Under the road level we had trains, and a special path for cyclists. That bridge represented years of my life."

The second man reflected for a while, then spoke. "One evening me and a friend threw a rope across a gorge," he said. "Just a rope, tied to two trees. There were two villages, one at each side. At first, people pulled packages across that rope with a pulley and string. Then someone pulled across a second rope, and built a foot walk. It was dangerous, but the kids loved it. A group of men then rebuilt that, made it solid, and women started to cross, everyday, with their produce. A market grew up on one side of the bridge, and slowly that became a large town, since there was a lot of space for houses. The rope bridge got replaced with a wooden bridge, to allow horses and carts to cross. Then the town built a real stone bridge, with metal beams. Later, they replaced the stone part with steel, and today there's a suspension bridge standing in that same spot."

The first engineer was silent. "Funny thing," he said, "my bridge was demolished not long after it was built. Turns out it was built in the wrong place and no-one wanted to use it. Some bastard had thrown a rope across the gorge, a few miles further downstream, and that's where everyone went."

Before you build a product, make sure it's what your customers actually want. Good advice for any entrepreneur!

The Ant and the Grasshopper...

One of Aesop's fables is “The Ant and the Grasshopper”.  Most of us over a certain age learned about this fable in school, or perhaps even read it as an adult.  Wikipedia summarizes the original fable like this:

The fable concerns a grasshopper who has spent the warm months singing away while the ant (or ants in some editions) worked to store up food for winter. When winter arrives, the grasshopper finds itself dying of hunger, and upon asking the ant for food is only rebuked for its idleness. The story is used to teach the virtues of hard work and saving, and the perils of improvidence. Some versions of the fable state a moral at the end, along the lines of: "Idleness brings want", "To work today is to eat tomorrow" or "It is best to prepare for the days of necessity".

My mom came across a slightly updated version:

The ant  works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.

The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.

Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while others are cold and  starving.

CBS, NBC ,  PBS, CNN, and ABC show up to provide pictures of  the shivering grasshopper  next to a video of the ant  in his comfortable home with a table filled with food. America  is stunned by the sharp contrast.

How  can this be, that in a country of such wealth,  this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?

Kermit the Frog appears on Oprah with the grasshopper and everybody cries when they sing, 'It's Not Easy Being Green.'

Acorn stages a demonstration in front of the ant's house where the news stations film the group  singing, 'We shall overcome.'  Rev. Jeremiah Wright then has the group kneel down to pray to God for the grasshopper's sake.

Nancy Pelosi & Harry Reid exclaim in an interview with Larry King that the ant has gotten rich off the back of the grasshopper,  and both call for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his fair share.

Finally, the EEOC drafts the Economic Equity & Anti-Grasshopper Act retroactive to the  beginning of the summer.

The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of green bugs and, having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the Government  Green Czar.

The story ends as we see the grasshopper finishing up the last bits of the ant's food while the government house he is in, which just happens to be the ant's old house, crumbles around him because he doesn't maintain it.

The ant has disappeared in the snow.

The grasshopper is found dead in a drug related incident and the house, now abandoned, is taken over by a gang of spiders who terrorize the once peaceful neighborhood.

Moral of the modern version? 

Be careful how you vote next year.

Amen to that!