A Tale of Two Passes and a Century of the Ridge Route (13 Jun 15 by gins)

A few years back, in the post ‘Broadband: Lifeblood, not Luxury,’ I wrote about the roles the Lincoln Highway and the Donner Pass played in connecting California to the rest of the nation.  Indians, traders, covered wagons, the railroad, the highway, not to mention cables and fibers all wound their way from east to west.   But there is another in California with an equally storied history, this time connecting the north and the south.

Separating the two parts of the state are the Tehachapi and San Emigdio Mountains, bisected by the Tejon Pass, and the role this pass plays today is possibly more important than the Donner.  Heading south from Bakersfield, the terrain rises thousands of feet before dropping into the San Fernando Valley.  Oil and gas pipelines, power lines, the California Aqueduct, fiber cables, and of course roads all traverse the pass.  It is the roads that are the most interesting, an open history book spanning the last century of the automobile.  The Lincoln Highway, then US 40, and now I-80 all lay claim to the Donner Pass.  In the same way, the Pacific Highway, US 99, and I-5 have all shared the Tejon at various times. 

The most interesting is the ‘Old’ Ridge Route, the first planned and paved link crossing the pass, completed a hundred years ago.  At the time it was considered an engineering marvel, but it was soon obsolete due to faster and better-designed cars.  Unfortunately, today it is no longer possible to follow it in its entirety due to washouts and abandonment, and we had to turn back after a few miles due to slides, even with an SUV.  No other cars were to be seen.  Another road built at about the same time, the Old Santa Cruz Highway, which was the first paved route across the Santa Cruz Mountains, suffers the same curves and narrow pavement.  And speaking of pavement, an interesting note - the Pacific Highway was once the longest paved auto road in the world.  This was probably a real improvement over the much older Siskiyou Trail, whose path it followed from Oregon to California.

History aside, one mode of transportation notably absent from the Tejon Pass is rail, due to the steepness of the terrain.  Here the two passes differ.   In ‘The Ties That Bind’ I wrote about high-speed rail.   Assuming all goes as planned, the train will in eventually link San Francisco with Los Angeles, but after Bakersfield the line will run east to Palmdale before heading into the LA Basin.   A tunnel, though technically feasible, just doesn’t make financial sense – we’re not the Swiss!

Make Room! Make Room! (2 Jun 15 by gins)

A recent Washington Post article entitled 'The amazing, surprising, Africa-driven demographic future of Earth, in 9 charts" (whew!) had me thinking about the implications of some of the conclusions and potential scenarios.  At a high-level, it concludes that the Earth must support over 10B people by the end of the century, of which greater than 4B will be in Africa alone.  7B of the world's population will be in developing or least developed countries, most developed countries with the exception of the United States will age and in fact see a population decline, and we still need to traverse a near-term bubble in the dependency ratio in Africa.  Surprisingly, Nigeria alone will host close to a billion by 2100, with China declining to about 1.2B.  But those 1B in Nigeria will be in a less diverse and environmentally rich space less than 1/10 that of China or just over 2x that of California.  So draw a comparison - imagine 500M people here!  And you think the commute on 85 or the I-10 is bad today.

The above projections in fact match those of another UN study that outlines just how much the world will change of the next decades due to urbanization.

What came to mind were two books that had an impact on me.   The first, Make Room! Make Room!, first published in 1966 and better known by the film adaption, Soylent Green, painted a picture of overcrowded cities and environmental ruin.   Timing - 2022, just 7 years from today.  A more impactful follow-up is The Population Bomb, published 47 years ago, predicting mass starvation and effectively throwing in the towel.   At least it helped catalyze the environmental movement.   Fast forward to Elysium, 2013, painting the same dismal picture but at least providing the 'haves' with a way out.   This is one scenario, probably top-of-mind for most looking from the outside in.

But there is another, and this is where are article left off, if we plan for and innovate to lift these 4B people into the middle class.   It goes without saying that political stability is a must, but there is a bit of a Catch-22 in what comes first - empowerment or stability.   One first step is knowledge, and the combination of cellphone coverage (and data, though not tied to a smartphone) and satellite TV (even if a single downlink is shared by a community)  is a major step.  Broadband is on the horizon, and access to big-data is already making an impact in planning based on the more recent availability of Africa-based fiber landings.

With continual declines in solar panel pricing (figure below), community-driven power becomes viable, a catalyst for lighting (and education), health, clean water, and agriculture.   I believe much of this will be at the grass-roots level, and with some international aid, growing foreign investment (from China, the Middle East, and elsewhere) the total energy mix by 2100 will be very different from what was predicted only a decade ago.   A chart by China Research, below, captures this best.   At the same time, we're in a new age of mechanical innovation focused on power efficiency, low-cost, and low-maintenance.  Basically, any electricity generated, water captured, or crops harvested are utilized that much more efficiently.

So yes, I'm optimistic that the 'African Century' won't only lead to 3B new heads to cover and minds and mouths to feed, but it will also provide us with the means to accomplish this.

Game of Streaming (11 Apr 15 by gins)

Like me, you're probably a GOT fan.  Problem is, I don't have cable HBO , and though I now credit them with their $15/month over-the-top plan, it doesn't go far enough.  At the house, we have Netflix, Amazon Prime streaming, and more recently, Sling, and would gladly pay for the series one-off.  Note that this is the case for many others via iTunes and Amazon.   But $180/year for effectively 10 episodes. or $18/hour, however juicy, just doesn't make sense.   This is probably 5x what is reasonable, say, $3.60/hour, or equivalent to what you'd pay in the cinema.  I understand the economics that HBO must play into with the cable operators and bundling, and the fact that GOT probably helps fund other productions, but moving the needle even further to the right could help avoid some of the piracy they can expect beginning in just over 24 hours.  Just a thought.

(Stop) Fanning the Flames... Religion and Social Media (15 Feb 15 by gins)

We read that today's cartoonists and communists state that religion is free game... that the Pope and Muhammad are open to the same level of satire as Obama and Putin. I can't agree, and just to level-set, I'm Jewish by birth, my wife is Catholic, and our family is what most would consider are non-religious... no bonds to any church or synagogue.  

Religion transcends politics and economics. It is with us at birth, through marriage, and at death.  It is unique, intertwined with the earliest of civilizations.  It cuts across the rich and the poor, the left and the right.  

So this is my litmus test... If a visual or commentary is offensive to those who believe, why pursue it?  I'm not by any means saying that those who take offensive should go on a rampage, but with all the hurt in the world, why go down a path that is guaranteed to create grief and inflame emotions?  And we've seen that social media, Twitter, Facebook, and whatnot, only amplifies this effect.  

Think! 

Look to the West - Thoughts for 2015 (22 dec 14 by gins)

Over 13 years ago my wife and I selected a Shakira song, 'Wherever Whenever,' as the first dance at our wedding. Shakira  wasn't too well known outside of the Latino community at the time, but with my Miami roots, I guess I was closer to her scene.  How times have changed with Pitbull (born in Miami) MC'ing the American Music Awards and Shakira now 2 for 2 with her incredibly popular 2010 and 2014 World Cup videos.  

Having spent 12 years in Europe I felt a real affinity for the 'old country,' but the ties just aren't there any longer. Admittedly, I'm probably behind the times on this.  Socially and economically, we need to embrace our hemisphere for what it is and chart our own destiny.   Its not isolationism, but when people ask if my daughters will study French (my original option, and we in fact went through 3 years of French au-pairs) or Chinese (that would be an even bigger joke, given lack of any family connections whatsoever), the logical conclusion is Spanish. 

Sure, as with any nation or continent, we experience boom and bust.  But with less dependence on foreign energy and its baggage, less dependence on trade where the trade-off with some countries seems to be the willingness to take part in an unending cycle of intellectual theft cat-and-mouse, and home-grown ingenuity that manifests itself in places like Amazon's latest 'factories' - I don't know what else to call them - our future in the new year looks bright.  I've just got to bone up on my language skills, something I've never been that great at. 

Snapchat and my Daughters (14 Oct 14 by gins)

By now you've heard of the latest security breach - the Snapsaved (now shut down) Snapchat client hacked and hundreds of thousands of potentially damaging photos posted to 4chan.  Now, although Snapchat itself was not the target, many, my daughters included, post to it, and to be honest, i don't know if they've been using the Snapsaved client (or some other client, yet to be hacked).   My bad!  But we do limit in-app purchases. The problem is that many of these casual applications are no-charge.  And i'm sure that they don't read the small-print when downloading said applications, as to what is saved and what is not.  Where to draw the line?

In a world where Instagram is the new clique, replacing clothes and what kind of house you live in, I can't really cut them off.  But i can give my daughters, ages 10 and 11, guidance, beyond the standard school Internet good citizen briefing on content and bullying.  Guidance that reflects more of the real world, like what happened to that unfortunate girl in Saratoga, just five miles from our house.  And guidance that can be understood by a very distracted ten year-old.

1.  Never post a picture or opinion that you'd not want to have viewed or read by a future employer, by college admission, or even by your close friends.   I know we've heard all of this before.  A scary statistic by the CTIA - 46% of adolescents, ages 11 to 17, have received a message or picture their parents would disapprove of due to sexual content.

2.  The same applies for pictures or opinions of friends (or non-friends).  What goes around comes around.

3.  Never (ever) be put in a position where someone has the opportunity take a picture that you'd not want to see posted.  Something to be said about a buddy system at parties, especially once they hit high school.

4.  Never share private information.  Once again, nothing new.

Over the last year, the CTIA has published some great infographics on www.growingwireless.com.   Worth taking a look.  And within the site, the resources page has a wealth of information spanning smartphone OSs and cellular providers.

Time to have that conversation!

Dystopia (25 Aug 2014 by gins)

I was thinking back on some of the recent movies i've seen.... Divergent, Lucy, The Giver... and I was thinking.  Is it just me, or is there some trend?  Best way to check is wiki.   Since many movies are derived from novels, here are those tagged as 'dystopian' by decade, knowing that it is inexact since the more recent ones will have a higher probability of mention.  But close.   

decade   number      per year    commentary
1900s      6                .6
1910s      4                .4
1920s      5                .5
1930s      17              1.7              depression?  impending war?
1940s      14              1.4              war
1950s      16              1.6              de-humanizing technology?
1960s      22              2.2              war, environment
1970s      17              1.7
1980s      12              1.2              bit of a lull
1990s      13              1.3              same
2000s      52              5.2              better reporting, or our angst is growing
2010s      36              9.0              over only 4 years.   what, me worry?

I can't draw any conclusions, but i'm thinking of moving to a small island in the South Pacific, though i worry about flies, polar bears, and those kids from Shiroiwa.