LIVERMORE, Calif. — Fusion, the process that powers the sun, is the forever dream of energy scientists — safe, nonpolluting and almost boundless. Even here at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, where the primary focus of fusion work involves nuclear weapons, many scientists talk poetically about how it could end the world’s addiction to fossil fuels. “It’s the dream of the future, solving energy,” said Stephen E. Bodner, a retired physicist who worked on fusion at Livermore in the 1960s and ’70s, recalling that the military focus was basically a cover story, a way to keep government money flowing to the lab for…
Author: Lloyd Graff
I read a provocative article by Jeremy Rifkin in last Sunday’s New York Times, “The Rise of Anti-Capitalism.” His thesis is that much of work as we know it is being devalued by the use of machines and robots. Things and services are also trending toward zero in price. The old view of the scarcity of commodities and labor is being turned on its head by the unlimited availability of stuff at almost no cost. He cites robotics and 3D printing using discarded plastic as feedstock as evidence of the trend towards endless deflation of prices. Rifken understands better than…
At its worst, the “airpocalypse” that settled over Beijing and northern China in late February had a fine particulate matter reading 16 times the recommended upper limit, turning Beijing into a veritable smoking lounge. Satellite images, a click away on the Internet, showed a massive toxic haze. Farther south, cadmium-tainted rice has been a staple of Guangzhou’s food supply since at least 2009. The dead pigs that floated down Shanghai’s Huangpu River last year were grotesque enough to haunt citizens even in their sleep. With such scenes as a backdrop, Premier Li Keqiang suitably declared a “war on pollution” at the…
Automotive is back. America has become a great car-making mecca again. Almost every major builder has a manufacturing presence here. The market for cars is solid, if not exuberant. The industry has headed to the South in Tennessee, the Carolinas and Texas, and even further south into Mexico, which has integrated itself into North American manufacturing like Canada did 25 years ago. The UAW is no longer such a dominant player in the car building scene. The recent rejection of the Union by Volkswagen workers in Chattanooga is representative of its marginalization by younger workers who see the UAW as…
I spent a lot of my weekend doing just what I really wanted to do. Watching BASKETBALL. I watched the college game, the pros, even a little womens ball. Loved every minute. I’m a junkie, I’m a basketball nut. I actually think basketball may have saved my life. As a kid I played almost every sport. Started with baseball. We played on the sidewalk, in the street, on the golf course between the 6th and 13th hole of the Jackson Park course across 67th street, next to my house. In my teens I played golf on that course for $3…
I’m still a relatively inexperienced salesman, as I’ve been selling machine tools for only two years. But I do believe I have the potential to be a decent one. I’m not afraid to talk to strangers, I think I’m a decent listener, and a lot of people appear to find me worth talking to. At the Precision Machined Parts Association (PMPA) Management Update in Las Vegas in February, I had the opportunity to attend a lecture by Ron Karr, a famous sales expert and author who has been on the lecture circuit for 25 years. I was surprised by several…
In our machine tool business we routinely order a standard part that comes in many sizes. The company we buy from, a world famous company, is known for its reliability and quality — but not for its speed. It always quotes us three weeks for non-stock sizes (even though it sells variations of the product every day), and I always wonder, why? I wonder how many sales they squander because of their rigidity. The company’s brand is literally sterling on silver, but they seem to take their customers for granted. We order their products, usually for resale, and the 3-week policy often…
The path toward U.S. energy independence, made possible by aboom in shale oil, will be much harder than it seems. Just a few of the roadblocks:Independent producers will spend $1.50 drilling this year for every dollar they get back. Shale output drops faster than production from conventional methods. It will take 2,500 new wells a year just to sustain output of 1 million barrels a day inNorth Dakota’s Bakken shale, according to the Paris-based International Energy Agency. Iraq could do the same with 60. Consider Sanchez Energy Corp. The Houston-based company plans to spend as much as $600 million this year, almost double its estimated 2013…
Connecting the dots … Jan Koum, an immigrant from Kiev, Ukraine, sells his five-year-old company, WhatsApp, for $19 billion to Facebook. Ukrainian people overthrow Viktor Yanukovych, a corrupt dictator allied with Russia and Vladimir Putin. Democrats make income inequality and minimum wage law reset into campaign issues. Republicans put immigration change off the table for internal political reasons going into 2014 elections. Luxury buses traveling from San Francisco to Silicon Valley become a political issue. Vivek Ranadivé becomes lead buyer of the Sacramento Kings NBA franchise. Jan Koum came to the U.S. in 1992 as a 16-year-old with his mother…
Entrepreneurs are everybody’s favourite heroes. Politicians want to clone them. Popular television programmes such as “The Apprentice” and “Dragons’ Den” lionise them. School textbooks praise them. When the author of this blog was at Oxford “entrepreneur” was a dirty word. Today the Entrepreneur’s Society is one of the university’s most popular social clubs. But what exactly is an entrepreneur? Here the warm glow of enthusiasm dissolves into intellectual confusion. There are two distinctive views. The first is the popular view: that entrepreneurs are people who run their own companies, the self-employed or small-business people. The second is Joseph Schumpeter’s view…