Werner Vogels in the ACM Queue on Amazon's Tech Platform

Tech: I ran across an interesting interview of Werner Vogels, CTO of Amazon, in the ACM Queue called A Conversation with werner Vogels. The interview covers a lot of terrain regarding Amazon's technology platform. One interesting aspect of development at Amazon, is that their developers actually operate their systems and are tightly intertwined with the end customers. Vogels states:

Giving developers operational responsibilities has greatly enhanced the quality of the services, both from a customer and a technology point of view. The traditional model is that you take your software to the wall that separates development and operations, and throw it over and then forget about it. Not at Amazon. You build it, you run it. This brings developers into contact with the day-to-day operation of their software. It also brings them into day-to-day contact with the customer. This customer feedback loop is essential for improving the quality of the service.

The idea is intriguing. The wall Vogel mentions is high, and expensive - layers of project management, ops teams, etc all abstract developers away from truly understanding what needs to be done to enhance the end consumer experience. One problem though: how do you get great developers if you tell them they need to be on a 24/7 pager.

Another interesting angle is the freedom Amazon gives their developers. Here's a snippet:

I think part of the chaotic nature—the emerging nature—of Amazon's platform is that there are many tools available, and we try not to impose too many constraints on our engineers. We provide incentives for some things, such as integration with the monitoring system and other infrastructure tools. But for the rest, we allow teams to function as independently as possible. Developers are like artists; they produce their best work if they have the freedom to do so, but they need good tools. As a result of this principle, we have many support tools that are of a self-help nature. The support environment around the service development should never get in the way of the development itself.

Artist Crave Validation

This a test post. Just want to upload a photo for use elsewhere.

Missing Chunks of the English Language

Politics, Search: Ran across this interesting list of words blocked by Google in China. Not sure why on earth most of these words were selected, but alas, here's a snippet of the terms courtesy of Google Blogoscoped:

abreast, abundant, acceptable, accusation, accuse, accused, adjacent, admirable, admiration, admire, admit, admitted, adorable, adult, affected, agree, airline, aisle, alive, allah, allegation, alligator, allow, ally, almost, alphabetical, ambitious, amir, amongst, amour, analogue, ancestry, ancient, anticipate, appeal, appear, appearance, applaud, appoint, appointed, appointment, appreciate, appropriate, approve, arabic, arithmetic, armored, ...

Al Qaeda Fomenting US / Iranian Tension

Politics: An interesting document was found on one of Zarkawi's computers. Some interesting points to keep in mind as we will innevitably hear more about the US / Iranian tension. Here are some snippets from the Christian Science Monitor in the article Picture of a weakened Iraqi Insurgency:

The Al Qaeda document gives a broad assessment, from apparent ordnance shortages to stoking a clash between the US and Iran. It also includes a lengthy list of potential "delegated wars" that would ease pressure on the resistance.

"The best of these wars to be ignited is the one between the Americans and Iran, because it will have many benefits in favor of the Sunni and the resistance," the document reads. Among those benefits are the "possibility of acquiring new weapons from the Iranian side, either after the fall of Iran or during the battles."

...

Its six suggested methods that read like a how-to guide for creating friction. They include sending out "threatening messages against American interests" and blaming Iran; "executing operations of kidnapping hostages" and blaming Iran; "advertising" that Iran has chemical and nuclear weapons "and is threatening the West."

Bomb attacks against the West would be blamed on Iran "by planting Iranian Shiite fingerprints and evidence"; declaring ties between Iran and "terrorist groups (as termed by the Americans)"; and "disseminating bogus messages" that Iran has weapons of mass destruction and "there are attempts by the Iranian intelligence to undertake terrorist operations in America."

Review of Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra's Rang De Basanti

Movie Review: People are often asking me for tips on great Bollywood films that don't have annoying singing and dancing - well Rang De Basanti has some singing and dancing, but its totally intertwined with the plot, and the film is beautiful and engaging. First, a bit of the what's it about. From Wikipedia (yes its strange that films now have Wikipedia write ups), but alas:

Struggling British filmmaker Sue (Alice Patten) comes to India after she reads the diary of her grandfather, who served in the British Force during India's struggle for Independence. She comes to India in order to make a short film about some of the heroes of the Indian Independence Movement, men such as Bhagat Singh and Chandrasekhar Azad. With the help of her friend Sonia (Soha Ali Khan), she sets out to find actors suitable for the roles. Sonia introduces Sue to some of her male friends [...]

Don't get too disappointed - for me, a typical clue that a Bollywood film is going to be terrible: when they start hauling out the whole east meets west theme (think Bride and Prejudice) - the Brit actually speaks Hindi with a not too annoying accent. The shooting is so well done - I especially loved the really grainy scenes shot in dumpy dhabas - all the friends inhaling food, laughing, and most typically Punjabi - picking on each other. There's also not a single motorcycle muscle flexing scene. Here's some more plot-y stuff from Wikipedia:

Sue convinces them to act in her film. Laxman Pandey (Atul Kulkarni), a political party activist, later joins the group though he is initially disliked by the other boys on account of his Hindutva beliefs and contempt of Aslam, who is a Muslim.

As the young men learn their lines and learn more about the history of the Independence movement, they realize that, unlike the men they are playing, they have lived completely for their own pleasures and have ignored India's pressing problems. They lack the spirit of patriotic self-sacrifice.

Strong film. I give it 3 1/2 out of 4 stars.

Google's Massive New Data Center

Tech, Search - Ran across an interesting article in the New York Times by John Markoff and Saul Hansell called: Hiding in Plain Site, Google Seeks More Power. Here's an excerpt:

On the banks of the windswept Columbia River, Google is working on a secret weapon in its quest to dominate the next generation of Internet computing. But it is hard to keep a secret when it is a computing center as big as two football fields, with twin cooling plants protruding four stories into the sky.

Review of Pixar's First Flop: Cars

Movie Review: Yesterday I took Nayan to go see Cars, the new Pixar film. I should start by saying I'm a huge Pixar fan - I love all their films, and in general, thought they were just out doing themselves with each new release - especially The Incredibles. But alas, maybe Steve Jobs is too busy w/ IPods, perhaps the clueless executives at Disney have gotten there grubby hands on this thing, or perhaps Pixar's talent has been pilfered by the Shrek-makers gang. In any event, this movie is terrible. The first, and foremost problem, is the whole car thing - I mean, every other Pixar movie had such an original story line, but a movie about an arrogant talking car that makes friends with nice cars w/ a bunch of stale jokes targetting the hinterland is certainly not on the same level as the premise behind The Incredibles, Toy Story, Nemo, etc. In addition, how many annoying cars driving around circles w/ CNN like coverage can a sane person take - even if it is spoofed a bit - its so subtle its not that funny. That reminds me, I have a friend who one day showed up in a 70s white camaro with flames swooshing down the sides, he was sporting long mutton chops, poofy hair, cowboy boots, and wearing a skin tight Cinderella tee shirt (not the childrens story character, but the bad hair 80s band). I shook my head, and said something to the effect, "Me thinks you're getting a little too close to the image you're spoofing." Not sure if that is totally related, but anyway, if you have kids, and have limited animation movie options, feel free to check this out, but don't get excited about it, and be forewarned: its on the level of a blah Disney picture more than past Pixars. I really hope this is temporary. 2 stars out of 4 from a company that traditionally gets 4s from me.

Slate's Transhumanist Communion

Politics, Misc: Slate is running a bizarre article by William Saletan called Among the Transhumanists. Here's a snippet:

On a projection screen at Stanford Law School, an auditorium full of nerds stared at a picture of a guy who'd done himself up like a cat—not with makeup, but with tattoos and surgery. The guy's whiskers were implanted. His nose had been converted to a cat nose. His teeth had been filed into the shape of cat teeth. His head has been flattened, and he was looking for a doctor to implant a tail. And that's just the tip of the freakberg.

Not sure what to make of this article, or for that matter, this collection of nut burgers. A colleague of mine was going on a few days ago about how humans will ultimately achieve immortality by being able to digitize their life experience, modelling their thought processes, and dumping it into a gigantic hard drive in, I guess, a hosted server farm in Renton with, I presume, a good emergency preparedness plan. Anyway, perhaps that conversation's why this article is showing up here on CB. Here's another snippet from Saletan's joyous communion with the transhumanists:

The sessions were ... interesting. A panel on religious views consisted of a transhumanist Zen Buddhist priest, an advocate of human enhancement as divine healing, and a pro-cryonics "Christian immortalist." Another panel addressed "the self-demand amputation community." You've heard of a woman trapped in a man's body? Imagine being a one-legged person trapped in a two-legged body, said the speakers. A third panel brought up the "cyborg dialectic": thesis, antithesis, synthesis, prothesis. I have no idea what a prothesis is. I assumed the cyborg dialectic would culminate in a prosthesis.

Spreadsheet Babble - The Media Loves Google and a Good War

Tech: Sometimes I wonder how a hot topic rises in the zeitgeist. Today, on Google news, and just about everywhere for that matter, is coverage about Google's new spreadsheet. I mean really, a lame spreadsheet that runs on the web is somehow huge news? This is 70s technology executed in a cumbersome and highly sluggish environment. I'll admit, I haven't actually seen it (still waiting for the Beta sign up to go through), and I'm sure the Google folks have executed it better than most if not all, but I know a fair amount about Ajax, browser barf, and the world of large delays and they don't make for a great combo in an app like a spreadsheet. Web email works, amongst other reasons, because people are accessing it from many machines, and the portability really matters. But spreadsheets? Who is standing at the Hong Kong airport Internet Cafe and crunching some last minute numbers? An executive with a portable drive who's laptop died? This just seems like a lot of trumped up media hype for something Google is just throwing out there and trying on for size. I can see some niche usage arising, but a direct threat to Excel?

The media seems obsessed w/ creating a new Google verse Microsoft CNN-inspired war zone. Yahoo seems a much more natural enemy of Google, why not cover that? But alas, its less newsworthy. Until Google is a real platform threat, and the two are duking it out over the desktop, which I'm sorry, but a cute little tool bar is not, I'm not buying into this mother-of-all-tech-wars thing. Serious competitors though? Certainly.

Review of John Battelle's The Search

Tech, Book Review: I just started reading a great book about the recent history of search by John Battelle. Battelle has interesting things to say; I follow his blog BattelleMedia quite regularly. Since I build search engines for a living, I find the topic pretty apropos, but I think the book should be of interest to anyone interested in how a search engine works, how they came to be, and more importantly, why they're such a big deal -- amongst other impacts: altering humanity and its social and economic interactions. Though the book is about much more than Google, Battelle does dig into a lot of nitty gritty about the rise of Google, and how Ad Sense and Ad Words was the fundamental/intimate connection to cash the business/ad world was seeking back during the late 90s Internet hay day. He also proposes a bit of a theory about how they ripped the idea off of Overture, since aquired by Yahoo. I'm not done yet, so I may have more to say on this topic soon, but I've read plenty to recommend it. I give it 2 3/4 stars out of 4 - mostly because that simplistic business writing style isn't engaging enough for a serious reader. I'd rate it higher if I was only considering it against similar business books.

Action Packed Sunday

Life: Well yesterday was quite an interesting day. My son and I packed up and went out on a long bike ride. My wife has recently discovered a gem of an idea, and I decided to give it a go -- I pull the Burley trailer behind me, with all of our "luggage" for the day - basketball, soccer ball, knights and castles legos, lunch, and most importantly bike lock. Then, when Nayan gets too tired to ride, I just lock up his bike, and pop him in the back of the trailer. He made it a surprisingly long way - we rode down to the Nordic Heritage Museum, played basketball, snacked up, then rode down to the start of the new Burt Gillman, rode that to the locks. We then meandered across the locks, visited a friend on the other side, after Nayan pushed his bike up a huge hill. Then he made it almost to Discovery Park. We had a lovely picnic lunch out where Ameen and I got married, at the Daybreak Star Cultural Center. Then he rode almost all the way home, where the real action started.

We get home, and a gigantic antenna is sticking out of the KIRO news van in front of our house. Here's a clip from the Seattle Times located HERE:

A three-hour police standoff ended Monday afternoon with the arrest of a 53-year-old Ballard man suspected of threatening his family. Police say the man possessed several weapons and that he and his wife had a previously unreported history of domestic violence.

Family members called police after they left the home in the 8000 block of 28th Avenue Northwest shortly after 2:15 p.m. with the man inside. Seattle police cordoned off the area in the Loyal Heights neighborhood and called in a SWAT team and negotiators.

Failing to get a response at the house, police thought the man might be hiding in his backyard. They tossed a percussion grenade into it and released a gas irritant. The man was flushed from a boat in the backyard and arrested, said Seattle police spokesman Rich Pruitt.

Nayan of course was thrilled with all the action in the neighborhood - helicopters circling over head, police barracades everywhere, etc. And like tried and true crime jaded Americans, our neighbors were all busy cracking jokes about the violent state of the nation. Alas, its a bit sad that few people are shocked over this sort of thing anymore. I'm sure if this happened in my friend's quaint neighborhood in violence deprived Oslo, people would be aghast.

Fun with Google Trends

Tech, Politics: I ran across this interesting new tool from Google labs called trends. It shows plots around the frequency of searches on Google correlated with the occurrence in the news. It also points the most popular origins of the queries, and key news events triggering the spikes, along with links to the news articles. Here are a few worth checking out:

Bush/Kerry - Note: Its pretty obvious who lost the election.
Cheney, Rumsfeld - Note: The largest spike was Cheney's famous display of hunting prowess.
Java - Note: The top 5 cities querying for the programming language are all in India.
Hurricanes - Note: The news loves to pump these up, and then afterward, discussion and concern quickly fade.
India, Pakistan - Note: It's pretty obvious which country is modernizing and getting its citizenry on the net.

Review of the Feast of Roses by Indu Sundaresan

Book Review: I just completed The Feast of Roses, by Indu Sundaresan, the sequel to The Twentieth Wife, which I reviewed HERE. I don't really see The Feast of Roses as a sequel -- the two books, in my view, were simply split up for marketing reasons. Nonetheless, I am really bummed to be done with this book. My evenings have been entertained for maybe 3 weeks now by Sundaresan's lovely and engaging story -- what am I going to read now? Here is a snippet from a great review by Wesley Burnett available HERE:

My outline of world history says only that Jahangir was given to drink, and that, as Empress, Mehrunnisa ran the show. It wasn't that easy, of course. Mehrunnisa, who repeatedly reflects that she wishes she were a man, forms a junta with her father, brother and the heir-apparent to the throne, Shah Jahan, and ruthlessly exploits Jahangir's love to seize ever increasing authority and power. In the process she violates most conventions of Mughal society. For starters, she leaves the zenana, the harem, to stand beside her husband at public audiences where she begins making official pronouncements. This offends Jahangir's advisors who are also his lifelong friends, male chauvinist pigs that they are.

Well, possibly they are, but as the story progresses, it becomes ever more difficult to sympathize with Mehrunnisa. She is the most powerful person in the world's most advanced civilization, but while she is wily as a fox, she isn't necessarily wise as an owl. She crushes opposition in the zenana where she ruins lives and alienates her few supporters. They get their revenge. A well-contrived accident terminates Mehrunnisa's pregnancy and her potential for mothering a dynasty. She exiles Jahangir's chief advisor to Kabul where he swears vengeance. She has to arrange a less than desirable marriage for her daughter who is unenthusiastic about producing males who will have to fight for the throne. Even her co-conspirators in the junta come to despise her.

Mehrunnisa's turn for the dark side was nicely portrayed by Sundaresan. The Twentieth Wife, she was a bit fluffy, and wide eyed - this was definitely not the case in The Feast. Her transformation and intoxication with power was engaging to observe, and forms a strong theme in the book. The sense of place and history was very well done. I highly recommend this series to any one, but particularly anyone interested in the Mughal period of rule in Indian history. I really hope Sundaresan keeps writing sequels until eventually reaching modern day India.

If only my history books were half this engaging. It gets quite boring seeing the fomulaic spattering of who conquered who, when and how fast in the dry discourse typical of historians. This historical fiction is so engaging, I may have to go find another one now. Please let me know if you have any suggestions. All in all I give Feast of Roses 3 1/2 out of 4 stars.

Don't Name Your Kid Omar

Politics: There's a rather frightening article in CSM called Death squads deepen division in Baghdad by Dan Murphy. Apparently the Mahdi Army's lovely rocket scientists in Baghdad have decided to kill everyone named Omar and Bakar. Here's a snippet:

Around midnight, seven cars roared down his [Abu Omar] street. One of the vehicles, a Toyota Landcruiser, burst through his front gate while men with rifles, grenades, and black masks poured into his yard, breaking the windows in his car and at the front of his house with their rifle butts, shouting "where's Omar, where's Omar,'' the name of his 18-year-old son.

Omar scrambled over a back fence and found safety in a neighbor's house, while his father was taken away for five hours of interrogation. "They told me that they were from the Mahdi Army and I thought these were my last moments on earth,'' he says. "But after a while they got a call, and decided to let me go. But they also told me they'd kill my son when they got him."

Abu Omar says the men told them they were killing all young men named Omar and Bakar - popular Sunni names borrowed from early Islamic caliphs hated by Shiites. They said they would be back for his son.

What is the world coming to? It seems we have indeed opened Pandora's box...

Oh No, Not That Frog Again.

Life, Review: Yesterday, Nayan and I rode our bikes down to the Sunset Hill Community club to see Frog Lake by the Thistle Theater folks. Here's a snippet from their website:

Enjoy the classic ballet Swan Lake transformed into a contemporary ballet, Frog Lake. Taddy, a young frog, is excited to be seeing her first ballet at her local pond. As the Conductor Frog enters the theater a hush falls, broken only by the sound of frog croaks and cricket chirps. On cue, fireflies flit to their respective footlights to illuminate the stage of the “Ballet de Pond”. Traditional choreography will be brought to life as the frogerinas dance to Tchaikovsky’s famous music.

I really wanted to like this, but I realized it had some fundamental problems. First, its a parody of a ballet. If you know anything about kids, it should be that they don't get irony or sarcasm, and certainly not parodies. So, you say, surely the intent is to entertain the adults, and that the puppets themselves are sufficient to keep the kids engaged. Well, if you know a bit more about kids, or atleast boys, its that the idea of "Silent" anything just doesn't work. Another problem could just be my testerone hang ups, but frankly, of all the fine arts, the one I like the least, is ballet. But atleast in real life, you can admire the physicality of the dance - but with puppet frogs very seriously leaping around in frog leotards? It could work if you embraced the stupidity, and cracked jokes about it - but alas, the "Silent" part killed that possibility. So, every time the main frog would come on stage, a cackle of 3 year olds would start shouting, "Oh no! Not that guuuuuy again." The theatre director, opens the show by admonishing the kids for yapping, and pleads for the mothers to assist. So, innevitably, the play was spent w/ mom's in a tizzy, trying to keep their bored kids engaged.

Just to keep up the bashing, I also, was utterly unimpressed with the set design - only a couple scene changes! The one thing that kept it from being a disaster, is that the puppets were fairly well done. This, from the Thistle Theater folks, who usually skimp on both set design and puppets. The Peter Rabbit puppets w/ the exception of the farmer, were something out of Wal-Mart, but alas, atleast he spoke.

Why, you might ask, am I harshing on the artistic merit of kids puppets? Well, this IS Seattle, where we not only have the good fortune of having puppet options, but most of the kids puppet theater is simply amazingly well done. The North West Puppet Theatre's renditions of both Babar and Madelaine were just beautiful and engaging - the kids and adults were enthralled; the set changes continuously and in a fairly complex manner. There's also this local couple that does a Spanglish version of a Mexican burrito guy that is by far the best puppet production I've seen with stunning hand painted (like by a real artist, and a good one at that) scenery, and the young couple are just amazing performers.

That Glazed Laptop Look

Politics, Life: CSM has an interesting article called Professors want their classes 'unwired' by Maia Ridberg. I've always thought this whole obsession of getting kids intertwined with their laptops is a bit manic. Here's a snippet:

When Don Herzog, a law professor at the University of Michigan, asked his students questions last year, he was greeted with five seconds of silence and blank stares.

He knew something was wrong and suspected he knew why. So he went to observe his colleagues' classes - and was shocked at what he found.

"At any given moment in a law school class, literally 85 to 90 percent of the students were online," Professor Herzog says. "And what were they doing online? They were reading The New York Times; they were shopping for clothes at Eddie Bauer; they were looking for an apartment to rent in San Francisco when their new job started.... And I was just stunned."

This seems obvious - computers, especially well wired machines, can be an incredible distraction; on occasion I will work from a cafe, or somewhere I am not wired, just so I can focus - I often go out of my way to unplug from IM apps, shut off my email notification, etc.

I held a meeting the other day, and a few folks hauled their laptops in. My team is extremely busy these days, and I strive to keep meetings very short so team members can get on with their work. The mere presense of these machines, while well meaning - to look up relevant information here and there, ended up distracting the two team members, and dragging the team meeting out.

Here's another entertaining quote from a student in Ridberg's article:

"Every single person I have ever seen bring a computer to class has also surfed the Web or been on IM," says Amy Kornell, an undergraduate at the University of California at Davis. "I saw one girl watch a whole episode of 'Gray's Anatomy.' But I would guess that solitaire is the most popular game."

Frogs on Granville

Life: We spent this weekend up in Vancouver visiting Ameen's family. Was a nice, relaxing trip. Saturday was intermittently blustery - we ran through some storms while passing through Bellingham, then it just sort of rained. Sunday, however, was sunny and bright -- a picture perfect spring day in the northwest.

Ameen spent about 15 years of her life studying, then printing/art making, on Granville Island in Vancouver. Whenever we're in Vancouver, Ameen gets an amazing itch to head to Granville. It's a lovely place, so of course I also now get this itch. For anyone visiting Vancouver, you can find out more at www.granvilleisland.com.

We got a chance to catch up with our good friend Peter who owns and runs New Leaf Editions, a fine printmaking studio on the island. Peter's a tad eccentric, and amongst other interesting Peter-isms, he has an exhaustive collection of frogs. Nayan was fascinated by the 40+ odd years of frog collecting Peter's been doing. His studio is full of frogs - coat hanger frogs, clock frogs that sing Irish drinking tunes, dancing frogs with red rubber tongues, and dead Japanese ones with a zipper instead of legs to hold coins, to name a few.

One of the joys of parenthood is seeing the fascination and enjoyment of the simple every day things we long since learned to tune out. Ananya, at the site of some rather standard ducks, was shreaking like a very happy banshee.

News Feeds and other Site Info

Tech: I recently installed Google Analytics, so I can get an idea of what you all do on this website, and how I might be able to improve it. As an aside, Google Analytics is an order of magnitude better than any site analysis tool I've used. The Google folks have perhaps the most elaborate and effective use of AJAX I've seen on the web. Among other things, I get to see which links people are using, how they enter the site, how often they simply bounce back out, where they come from, geographical maps, etc.

One of the things I learned is that many of you aren't using RSS feeds, but are periodically visiting the site (mostly by Googling for Chalo Bolo). That's not a bad thing, if I were a more diligent poster, but I suspect many of you get mildly annoyed to find out that I haven't posted in a while. So I recommend using a consolidated viewer like Bloglines; with a blog lines, or similar account, you can keep all the news, blogs, etc. that you read at one URL, then you can automatically see which of your sites have new content, summaries of the posts, etc. You can usually simply add the URL of your sites, and almost every site, including blogs and more popular sites like the NYT, Christian Science Monitor, etc. all support RSS feeds.

Another thing I learned, is that many of you are repeatedly following the Topic links off to the right of this post, which is great. For those of you who have not, I'll briefly explain. For each post I make, I tag the post w/ certain classifications, like: Life, Politics, Movie Reviews, etc. The links off to the right point to these posts. If all you're interested in are Movie Reviews, than you can simply follow that link and avoid the rest. And of course, if you're interested in all of it, you can ignore this advice all together!

FFVs and Lessons from Brazil

Politics: I ran across an interesting article titled Alternative Fuels - Lessons from Brazilia by Bill Siuru. In it, Siuru writes:

When oil prices dropped in the mid-1980s, coupled with the discovery of new offshore oil fields, gasoline became cheaper. This was further compounded by a drought and a poor sugar harvest disrupting the supply of alcohol. Then by 1989, sugar prices started to rise dramatically and producers exported sugar rather than turn it into fuel. By 1997, alcohol capable cars represented less than 1-percent of new vehicles sold in Brazil.

Brazil learned a lesson from these ups and downs. The result were flex-fuel vehicles (FFV) that could run on any fuel from pure gasoline to pure alcohol. All Brazilian gasoline is blended with at least 20- to 25-percent ethanol. Some 29,000 out of 31,000 fueling stations in Brazil also offer 100 percent ethanol for the older alcohol-only vehicles. Brazil currently has between 3-million and 4-million ethanol fueled vehicles.

Something that has negatively biased my view of ethanol in the US, was the claim that it was just a huge government subsidy with no real benefit - the prime argument as I recall, was that the energy to produce ethanol, was so great, that it just wasn't worth it in the end. Siuru sites some interesting numbers, that back this up:

Fermentation of Brazilian sugar cane produces much more ethanol as compared to corn. For each unit of energy expended to turn cane into ethanol, 8.3 times as much energy is created (1 to 8.3.) Compare that to corn which gets a maximum of 1.3 times the engery from a single unit (1 to 1.3.) Research is underway in Brazil to increase this to 1 to 10. Also, no fossil fuel is used in the process of converting sugar cane to ethanol. The residue from the stalks is used to generate the necessary electricity, and to fertilize the sugar cane fields.

So it sounds like corn is the culprit, not ethanol in general. This is an interesting read. I'm surprised Brazil isn't being sited more on models to follow, or atleast study more, given their relatively minimal use of gasoline.

Mullahs and Gas

Politics: Thomas Friedman was on NPR the other day; he made a statement to the effect that he's happy either way with what happens in Iran. If the mullahs bow to the west and drop their nuke quest, grand. If they continue to push the US, then Bush et. al. will have no choice but to push for strong sanctions and the Euros are more apt to listen. This will have the innevitable impact of shaking the oil markets further, pushing gas prices even higher.

In Friedman's view, and I tend to agree, the higher the price of gas, and the longer it stays high, the quicker this nation, and others, can get off oil. This outcome is beneficial, not only because of the benefits of reduced green house emissions, but also due to reduced dependence of the US on volatile oil supplies and price fluctuations. Reducing green house emmissions makes me and the penguins happy. Reducing US oil dependence makes conservatives happy because they believe this cash goes to fund terrorists, and it makes liberals happy because it reduces the hegemonistic instincts of US foreign policy.

In any event, one could easily plot the correlation of gas price spikes and the frequency in the news with which alternatives to oil are discussed. I, unlike the punditocracy, do not believe this situation is that difficult to resolve. I believe you need to do the following:

1. Develop efficient alternative fuel based solutions (i.e. bio-diesel, alchohol, etc.) One would think conservatives and liberals could agree on this - farm belts thrive with a massive new market. Liberals get reduced emissions, working open spaces (and hence less sprawl) and a happier planet.

2. Develop FFVs (Flexible Fuel Vehicles that run on gas or an alternative fuel). Again, this should be a political no brainer - gas is not eliminated over night, so if consumers can select gas or alchohol, they're happy to have the option to chase lower prices, or align their fuel and ethics.

3. Develop pluggable hybrids (hybrid FFVs that can be plugged into a socket at night). More supply diversification due to the variety of electricity options. A hybrid gets 60+MPG. With local only traffic, you could be getting 400+ MPG if you're fairly close to home and plugging in at night.

4. Keep pushing on the fuel cell front for the longer term horizon. Zero emissions should still be the goal.

and most importantly:

5. Keep the price of gas high

High gas prices keep everyone talking about gas alternatives; it encourages VCs to inject cash into start ups where the real innovation occurs, and vested interests can be toppled with disruptive technologies, or atleast forced to embrace them. High gas prices also encourages people to leave their giant SUVs and F350s.