airshipventures.com
Hey, who wants to fly into inner outer space for a few minutes for $200,000 and feel that great 8g rush on reentry? Humm…no not me. Well, how about drifting at a thousand feet over your neighborhood? Or over the ocean where you might see great whites and even shipwrecks in the shallows. Cruise past the Golden Gate Bridge and spot sailboats racing on a broad reach as you sail overhead. This is the effect from the Zeppelin Eureka, a dirigible based at Moffett Field.

How in the heck did this come to pass? Well you can credit Brian Hall and his wife Alexandra. Alex is the past director of the Chabot Space and Science Center and Brian founded and still has the helm of the successful software firm Mark/Space. One ride aboard the Zeppelin NT in Germany made Brian a believer. (from their website) “Designed exclusively for passenger operations, the Zeppelin NT (“New Technology”) is unlike any other airship in the world. Engineered with the best in German technology, the airship's precise handling, and quiet, spacious cabin with oversized windows and restroom were designed for luxurious passenger operations. Realizing that there was no experience like this, and no airship technology like this in the U.S., Brian immediately embarked on his next business venture.” Alex grew up in England near the dirigible hangers at Cardington and all her life she wanted to be an astronaut. She would have made a good one but it turned out she wasn’t quit tall enough so with the airship she says she has had to have an altitude adjustment.

California has a deep history of lighter than air because it was at Moffett filed that the Airship Macon was based in the huge Hanger Number 1, which is still there. In the 1930’s airships represented the wave of the future and the people of Sunnyvale voted to sell the land that is Moffett to the federal government for $1 if they would locate the ship there. The program was not a success but the tiny air station grew and around it prospered early avionics firms such as Fairchild Raytheon and Varian. It can be contended that one of the reasons we have Silicon Valley as we know it today is because of the Macon program.
The Eureka is a 246 long dirigible. It is made by the Zeppelin Luftschifftechnika 100+ year old firm that has been involved with aircraft and engine manufacturing for over a century. It is true that the Hindenburg was a Zeppelin but it used flammable hydrogen for lift where modern ships use inert helium. What makes it a dirigible is the internal skeleton as opposed to a blimp that is a big balloon. The skeleton allows the envelop to hold a very low pressure, just over 1 psi so if (a nearly impossible to conceive of) breech the helium would take hours to escape. The ride in this ship is similar to a hot air balloon but one you can drive at up to 70 mph and basically cruse where you wish.

I went recently with a group of friends and it was nothing short of magical. It is equal parts modern aviation with 1930’s pizzazz yielding a singular experience so visceral as to make it hard to describe. As you coast over the land it is staggering to see the amount of stuff we have built and when you coast over the estates from Saratoga to Woodside the grandeur is awe inspiring. You see dogs running for Frisbees, countless folks waving and lines of cars and rapid transit snaking in all directions. Over the mountains you see running deer and hikers stopping to look up at you. Over the ocean you see the silt roiling down from the creeks and if you are lucky enough to go over Anno Nuevo you see the Elephant seals in the multitude looking at you in curious wonder. One of life’s great thrills is to gaze down upon the fabled Golden Gate and see the majesty and unique character of San Francisco. You can see clearly the cable cars and the vital pulse of the city. But mostly you see folks looking up wishing they were where you are.

It isn’t all just sightseeing with the folks at Airship Ventures. In fact this summer there is a whale survey planned for the San Juan Islands around Seattle. The ship will make the first trip of a Zeppelin from Southern California to Canada. Alex and Brian have the youthful exuberance of the barnstormers who popularized aviation a hundred years ago (but with an appropriate eye toward safety). So they want to make it interesting by taking voyages to the fun places like Catalina and Hearst Castle.

The ship will be spending some time in the LA area each month in the first half of 2010, and will back here otherwise. You can even buy a ticket for that very special longer cruise along the coast - 8 hours to or from LA isn’t fast, but route 1 from the air must be tremendous fun!

In spite of the recession they have been getting solid bookings, including many private charters for parties, corporate events, and even a wedding! I had seen the ship flying around for several months before going aboard. I now wonder why I waited because I see the Bay Area in a whole new way; a more intimate and grander place.

Don’t think you’ll get around to it sometime or when you finally decide to fly there might be a year long waiting list like they have in Germany! You need to have this on your New Years Resolution list! My advice is go to the website airshipventures.com and book now.

Alwayson 3rd annual VC conference

Alwayson 3rd annual VC conference

The socially mediated wireless Chinese cloud. This about sums up the tech industry today. Run, run at full speed and if you stop to tie your shoe you end up at the back of the pack. Dern!

Bill Gurley, a partner at Benchmark Venture Partners, was the keynote speaker at the AlwaysOn venture summit and he looked out over the crowd and said, in essence, that up to half of the venture firms will be folding in the next little while and that little while is a very little in this new rat race. Oh heck, just when I thought I was winning the rat race they brought in faster rats!

The reason for this was not obvious to me until he explained the Yale Model of institutional investing. It seems that the endowments of some of the powerhouse universities and other institutions saw fat profits in what has been called “alternative investments” these being the illiquid ones from timber and real estate to venture funds. Then came the crash in values all around the world and the endowments were stuck with assets they couldn’t sell or had to dump at a huge loss. In fact, Harvard has been one of the hardest hit (11 billion down from 26 billion) and they have had to cut back on some of the ivy covering the buildings. This is quite true as there is a multibillion-dollar science building that has been halted in mid construction. Ouch.

And some entrepreneurs are looking for funding from places other than venture firms for funding. Because it takes less capital to launch a firm today than it did ten years ago the angel investor is pretty busy. Not only that but there is funding from large corporations who are becoming more vertical like Cisco and even the CIA, as they fund projects that can benefit them. It doesn’t’ stop there. HP is doing it but, get this, so is Best Buy and Proctor and Gamble. This makes some sense but it is strange to think that you can go to a Best Buy and pick up much of the gear to launch your startup and they will pay you to take the stuff.

I met the top brand manager at Proctor and Gamble back in early 2000 when Tim Koogle and Jerry Yang had the bizarre notion that I would make an ideal keynote speaker at a national Yahoo conference where brand managers would come from all over and explore how they could be part of the Internet revolution. Tech companies were side by side with Taco Bell. How do you put a taco online you ask? The answer is you couldn’t then but now they can with the new social tools like maps and Twitter. P and G actually opened an office on Sand Hill in 1999 but soon closed it. Now they are back and their cash is the old fashioned kind, large and liquid.

I see the venture industry as having followed the same path as the motion picture industry in the last century. Early on there were a smattering of small studios and then bam, a gold rush. But most studios lost money and closed, leaving a few big operations and a lot of small independents. Like the film business the venture business had always been about home runs and as in baseball most pitches do not score points.

David Cowan at Bessemer Venture Partners said that one thing limiting his ability to uncover and fund new ideas is that the top VC’s are overloaded with inventory and sitting on all the boards as well as providing the guidance that they have been brought aboard to do takes a tremendous amount of time. Leave the nest already! And since new deals are slower in arriving it becomes hard to justify bringing more folks in into the venture firm.

David raised another interesting point that in the current climate there are a great number of clean tech companies being funded and unlike software they are building tangible products that take a lot more money to build. If you extend the capital requirement graph of all the clean tech firms you will see a monster delta between the amount of possible capital and the need. So most of these firms are just not sustainable. Deepak Kamra of Canaan Partners brought up the fact that it takes 9 years from inception to an exit. During this period follow on capital and VC expertise has to be continually pumped into the startup.

Tim Draper of Draper Fisher Jurvetson Venture Partners talked about one of his favorite subjects, China. Tim is the ultimate free trader and he and his partners were an early investor in Baidu, the Chinese search engine and the only one that gives Google a run for its money. Where a lot of American business folks approach the Chinese dragon with trepidation, Tim respects them as fearless, confident and tough. He feels that we have in them worthy partners that will make us better if we stand up in the marketplace with the same attitude.

But with all this, the mood is one of cautious optimism. Back at the beginning of the decade the VC and techfolk in the Valley seemed a bit depressed and even though it has picked up some in the last few years it is still very hard to make money in the VC game. This is because the upside is not realized until there is a way to fully capitalize the company. In the real world most everything is about showing up but in the VC world it’s about the exit. There has to be a stock offering or the firm has to be sold before there is dime one to the VCs and these events are far less common than 10 years ago. Sometimes neither strategy is possible and the firm is held as private equity with a much slower trickle of profits from operating income. Of course the worst scenario is that the firm folds and generally all is lost at that point.
In The Valley you hear a lot of talk about failures being celebrated. You hear people actually saying it is good to fail that it teaches valuable lessons and so on. This is crap. Sure you can learn from failure like if you slam our fingers in a door you learn not to do it but believe me the better lessons are from success. It is far better to be like the founders of Google. Succeed at the first thing you try. Now that’s a lesson!

Back at the AlwaysOn conference I found myself surrounded by biz school types. Now I feel about advanced degrees for business about like I view cooking school for chefs. The real world has far more to teach than business school. But if you have time to kill by all means hang out in school. If you have an MBA and you write about business and you are full of hot air people will think you’re an idiot. But if you haven’t got an MBA and you run a restaurant and you write about business you are merely considered colorful.

So what’s with these VC types anyway? Are they a bunch of wealthy geniuses who have offered up the capital to bring us a new age, an age as significant as when Gutenberg pulled his first page from the press but muuuuch faster? Well yes, that’s about it.

In fact a little history is warranted. Gutenberg was a failed mirror polisher back in the 1540’s. His idea was to manufacture and sell penitent mirrors (a small polished metal disc on a stick) which were taken to witness a holy relic and, like a nonworking camera, the pilgrim brought the image back to his village. Even the limited mind of a Dark Ages plowman wouldn’t fall for that and the business tanked worse than Microsoft Vista. But his second invention was combining a wine press, easily replicable lead type, oil based ink and a grand vision for a new Bible. He went to angel investors for the research money and in 18 months produced his first page. In short order he printed the most valuable book of all time and everything changed. Venture money made this possible so if you sometimes think that angels and VCs are as useless as shower curtain-ring salesmen just think about how long it will be till you next pick up a device that has been made possible by the quick wits of the entrepreneur and the swashbuckling risk takers on Sand Hill Road.

So today there are reduced expectations and the VCs job is harder. The parties at the end of these conferences are sober, dignified affairs and VC’s look almost dull compared to the old days. I well recall back in the 90’s when angel investor extraordinaire Ron Conway held a charity auction and one item, golf with Tiger Woods with Warren Buffet as the caddy, went for over $720,000. Ahhhh the fun we had.
alwayson.goingon.com to see the conf. video

The Happy Body and The Village Doctor

Aniela and Jerzy Gregorek live with their 4-year-old daughter Natalie in a Zen garden in a modest redwood sheathed house in the Glens in Woodside. Creeks and waterfalls cascade from all corners and small buildings peak out from under the trees. It is an oasis in already tranquil neighborhood.

In about 7 months I lost 78 lbs and achieved a level of fitness that, when factored with my age, is actually the fittest I have ever been. I have been stronger and fleeter but I have never been as integrated as I am today. Like many of us I tried a number of different techniques to get off the couch and to eat less. I kept losing my way because I repeatedly saw the process as just that, a process, something to be endured. I now see that the exact techniques are secondary and success comes not from a short-term set of practices but simply the commitment to become the person you think you want to be. What I mean is that many of the techniques for weight loss work and there are any number of exercise routines that will make you fit but they really only make a long term difference if you surrender to the idea that this is the way you are going to run you life and not something just tacked on as an expedient. A critical element is that exercise and diet are all of a part. Diet plans that don’t integrate exercise, and the reverse, rarely have much effect. I say it isn’t about technique but at The Happy Body there is certainly technique and it very specific.

Most people go because they want to lose weight but if you think that you will just be given a diet program you will soon be disabused of that. When I first showed up Jerzy took a look at me and it was pretty obvious I need a remodel. But why would I listen to him? On my arrival I saw a rather gorgeous woman leaving. “Who is that I asked, she can’t be a client she looks way to fantastic.” Oh, she is a client and if you do exactly what I tell you, I guarantee others will be saying that about you.”

People go to THB and for many reasons. Some need help with arthritis, others are just feeling old and some are accomplished athletes who want to be at peak fitness. My long time friend Jim went to increase his muscle mass. He has never had a weight problem. He is ramrod straight and he has an excellent diet. With this training Jim felt that he could perform later into life with a higher level of general fitness and here is someone who knows a great deal about the subject having been a driving force in the senior fitness movement for many years. He is approaching 80 and he looks to the future with optimism and enthusiasm. We used to jog together but I was to slow for him. I still am.

Barry is bit more typical. He needed to pull back 50 lbs and did it as planned. He shares with me the practice of working out regularly and keeping his eye on the scale. He and I discovered the same thing. Food wasn’t the enemy. In fact, quite the opposite.

I recently had lunch with Roger and Betty (he had the Caesar salad with chicken, dressing on the side, she the stuffed artichoke) both very active folks about my age and they had been down a similar path as me with regard to trying all sorts of different programs. Betty tried Jenny Craig, Nutrasystems and the gym scene. All this proved to be ineffective and one day Betty ran into a friend who was in the “you look terrific phase” so she signed up and soon her husband was in going too. A couple going through the Happy Body program is ideal of course. Roger and Betty are financial advisors and so quite often are desk bound but Roger is also a lacrosse referee and can now run enthusiastically back and forth for 50 games a year with his newfound fitness. They have a certain glow, which is once again plain old optimism about the future.

If you have a dramatic weight loss the reactions are predictable from: “Hey, you look good” to “Wow, you look terrific!” to “Whoa, are you dying?” Many of us have known people who were losing weight due to a serious illness and when half the people think you are one of them then you know you have your ideal weight. I am not kidding. When you are heavier and maybe 30 or 35% body fat, your face is fuller but get down to 10 or 15% and all the lines show up like cracks in a dry creek. They say that when you hit 40 you can pick your face or your ass but let me tell you at 60 you get neither so you had better focus on muscle, blood pressure and cholesterol.

The Gregorek’s have a new book coming out titled The Happy Body: The Simple Science of Nutrition, Exercise and Relaxation about how they deliver the goods. They tell you all about how they have become the dynamos that they are. Their personal goal is to be at the highest level of fitness for their entire lives and so far they are right on track. They are glad to share their path and the book will be available here as soon as it is printed. In it they tell you all about their exact strategy to become and stay fit and I can tell you if you follow the book it is guaranteed to work. But who really does what they tell you to do in books? The fact is that the human touch is what we all need and that’s why attending their program is where the fat hits the fire.

At THB they stress above all youthfulness. Youthfulness is an attitude not an age. I can honestly say that two years ago I felt as if I was nearly used up. Today I see no horizon at all and am eagerly looking for the next engrossing project.

Jerzy and Aniela happen to compete on a world stage in Olympic weightlifting so naturally they love this path and many of the exercises they give you are based on their this discipline. I have modified some of the exercises but building on the core instruction I have found my way to a work out I now do for 50 minutes a day, six days a week. I use dumbbells, a rubber tube, straight bar and let gravity do its derndest. I never thought I would like crunches and sit-ups but I do a wide variety of them as well. I used to work out in a gym for years but it always seemed like an obligation, something to get through like a kid forced to chew through a pile of spinach. Until I was introduced to the gradual increasing approach at THB I generally resented working out. But ever the contrarians Aniela and Jerzy use some techniques that a few coaches object to. Their work out doesn’t involve much sweating, hyperventilating or any endurance at all. Object if you will but look at them; they positively radiate fitness. In the end the best workout is the one that you will do day-in-day-out so if you like the marshal arts or yoga or running I say, terrific.

My friend Ilona has a great take on her time at THB. She has always been quite fit but twenty pounds beyond ideal. She felt that the workout she was doing didn’t make her happy and much of the food she ate wasn’t fulfilling. She heard that Jerzy and Aniela were telling people that they could tune you up to peak performance so she went. Now years after her last session she tells me that she credits much of her physical and mental integrity from her participation there. As she become healthier and more confident her daughter took notice. This 13 year old had a less then happy body image with a weight problem that bothered her. Ilona didn’t want to push her but the girl’s food choices were leading her down a dark path. Based on her mother’ success her daughter decided to go to THB and as a result she was able to reach for the brass ring and today is self posed 17 year old who likes the way she looks and how she feels.

So think of the things you did in the past and try to recall if your trainer ever said to you “Just do exactly as I tell you and you will get the body that you imagine for yourself. You will earn it, you will own it and (baring illness) you can keep it all the way to the finish line.” At The Happy Body this can happen to you.

If you think this is too good to be true or is some sort of advertisement, well it isn’t. I know some folks will go there will not succeed. But I tried a number of ways to come to peace with my body and it worked for me.

Village Doctor
If you picture a kindly old sawbones with a stethoscope in one hand and a lollypop in the other dispensing tried and true homilies about common sense and good health under a chestnut tree on the village green you might want to swing that around to 2009 where you will find instead a small focused practice where good common sense is dispensed for sure, but tempered with the latest advances in both science and service. Behold, the concierge practice that is the Village Doctor. villagedoctor.com.

First a note on how this works. Retainer fee or concierge medical practice is basically an agreement between a doctor and a patient whereby the doctor sees fewer patients and the patient pays more for the basic office services. Frankly some will say it is too expensive for them and others will see it as appropriately priced. The fact is that the annual fee is not covered by insurance. But with the decoupling of insurance, the physician and the patient are freed from the hustle that has become a part of medicine and which can (not necessarily will, but can) create an adversarial relationship between a patient and a doctor.

The three doctors include the founder, Dr. Eric L. Weiss, a long time emergency room doctor who is also a medicine travel specialist. At one point he was the doctor for the San Francisco International Airport. As a result The Village Doctor is recognized as a top travel clinic for the nation. Dr. Prerana Sangani is an internist with a public health background and Dr. Raquel Burgos has an extensive background in pediatrics. The other staff members ensure that scheduled visits start on time and route you to your doctor at any time for emergencies. There is a lot of talk about wellness as opposed to treatment but let’s face it, unless there is time to actuate the specifics then it becomes just more jibber jabber.

In addition to the regular practice The Village Doctor has taken the wellness formula and rolled out The Wellness Studio that is open to the whole community and is separate from the medical practice. This from their website: “Incorporating selected complementary alternative medical (CAM) therapies and successful fitness programs, The Village Doctor now offers a truly integrative approach to wellness. Specialists are able to work independently or collaborate in creating a highly comprehensive personal healthcare program. The Village Doctor Wellness Studio, a newly remodeled eco-friendly studio, is conveniently located off 280 in Woodside. Patients of The Village Doctor Concierge Medical Practice receive the unique benefit of their primary care physician’s inclusion and oversight of their individualized wellness programs; however, the Wellness Studio is very much open to the public.” wellnessstudio.com The Center provides classes in Yoga, Contour and Pilates. There is acupuncture, physical therapy, massage and nutrition counseling. Hummm, I feel better already. Dr. Weiss has also included a healthy item on the Buck’s kids’ menu. A kid’s chef salad. Check it out.

I made a commitment to try the practice for a year and see what happened. I am now 60 years old and for the last three years I have been a patient of The Village Doctor. I’m not there a great deal but I have come to see it a bit like a traveler crossing the Golden Gate Bridge. The actual time I’m on it is not that much but it is a great way to get where I’m going and I have been going two places. First I have needed to be sent to specialists in a couple of areas focused around injuries. It is a typical and not very interesting story.

The second thing and this has been the really vital (vital is such the perfect word here as I means “related to or the characteristics of life”) Dr. Weiss took my vitals during the first checkup and said, “Hey, you fat slug. Get fit or die.” Actually he didn’t say this but this was the message I heard. He let me know in his gentle way what I already was pretty sure of, being way overweight and staring at the universe from my vantage point on the couch was a life threatening reaction to a long-term problem.

So what to do? He suggested that I give The Happy Body folks a call. Now I had done that already about a year before and got some fellow on the phone who sounded a bit scary. He basically said to come see him if I was through being fat and lazy…well I wasn’t. And, unlike Dr. Weiss, he really was that direct.

Anyway Eric said I should probably go see them and I did. But that’s another story. Now when I go in for my check up I am happy with my vitals. My numbers are in the normal range and my blood pressure is actually low. It turns out that a guy in his younger years celebrates great biceps and abs. As he get older it’s more about good knees and a solid back and as he, and of course she, gets up there, it’s blood pressure, cholesterol and glucose that become very interesting to you.

So there may be no spreading chestnut tree but there is good medicine at The Village Doctor.

TED 2009

First a definition. TED is real, virtual, exclusive, inclusionary, site specific and global. TED started 25 years ago as a convocation of explorers examining the universe of Technology, Entertainment and Design. Today it is still about all this and more. TED is quickly becoming a big part of the world brain. I have attended for several years and TED has grown, as have I. Much like a space probe using the gravitation of the planets they pass to slingshot for more speed I am using TED as a pivotal point for my own life as I move forward to the challenges ahead.
In fact it was at TED in 2008 that I made a commitment to myself to whip myself into the best shape of my life. Happily I stuck to it. My commitment to myself for this coming year is to…well, you will have to watch this space same time next year.

TED has two major aspects, the formal stage presentations and the socializing during the intervals. At one point I found myself chatting with Bill Gates, Al Gore and Robin Williams. Robin asked me, “Aren’t you the Buck’s guy?” I admitted I was and Al said, “I go there.” I realized that Bill was a Buck’s customer as well. Just like you.

The generally serious academic presentations are broken up with dance troupes, piano jockeys, comedians, singers and even a live, remote youth orchestra from Venezuela. We have all heard youth orchestras and they are generally enthusiastic but a little raw. José Antonio Abreu’s (a TED prize winner) Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra draws from 250,000 young musicians, many from impoverished areas and it was, to my ear, the equal of any big city orchestra. These kids made me feel that the future was in very capable hands. Much of the conference is about the future, transcending shorter term problems like the economy. Where are we going as a people on this beautiful blue ball? Big notions and individual personal achievements are presented like the man who walked, not skied or sledded, to the South Pole. We swooped with Uli Gegenschatz the inventor of the winged flying suit as he showed us a film of him zooming through the Alps. He is actually working on a new suit where he jumps, flies and lands without a parachute.

Bill Gates filled us in on his world plan for fighting disease and his teacher training programs. At one point he pretended to release malaria infected mosquitoes into the crowd from a small jar saying, “Why should the poor be the only ones who get malaria?” When the anticipated laugh line didn’t materialize he added that the mosquitoes really didn't have malaria. For some reason this was interpreted by the press as dangerous or the rich had it coming and other unkind kind things. Hey, press folks, it was a joke! In fact Bill has a very good sense of humor and if you don't believe it, look up his retirement video on line. Chris Anderson, the Curator and host of TED, said as the pretend mosquitoes flew off that here was Bill releasing more bugs into the world (a line that did get the laugh). Bill Gates is a hero for the ages and to be in his presence is a tremendous honor. Later in the week I stepped into an elevator which held him and a service person with a cart on which rested a fruit plate. Behind the waiter’s back I mugged a snatch at the fruit. Bill gave me a conspiratorially permissive wink and I grabbed a strawberry. A small exchange, and for me indicative of the good will and mutual respect the very famous show the less so at the conference.

On TED.com you can see all the talks so I will mention a very few of them. P. W. Singer updated us on the burgeoning world of remote warfare. Combat robots in the water, on the ground and in the air. Compassionless killing machines. Very cinematic stuff and not in a good way. This was followed by a group of vocalists called Natural 7 who have taken hip-hop, jazz, R & B and rock and come up with a truly original sound using voice and electronic modulation to rock the house.
At one point I found myself at a table with a small group of Tedsters both typical and extraordinary. We were discussing the survival of the oceans with Silvia Earl the eminent oceanographer who was one of the winners of the TED prize. Next to me was the director of Stanford’s design school, Banny Banerjee. Next to him was Ram Shriram and his wife Vijay. Ram was an early investor in Netscape and helped launch Google. There was also Glenn Close and her husband the biotech exec David Shaw. I am a bit conflicted about Hollywood celebrities. We know who they are and they don't necessarily know us. This imbalance can make striking up a conversation strained. There are those of them who exhibit a kind of a grace that says, “It’s OK, you can talk to me” and Glenn one of these people. She was not wearing makeup, exhibited no movie star spin and she looked you in the eye. I was bold enough to ask her about her current TV show and she was very happy to talk about it. Well, I don't mind discussing my work and so why should she? Folks are cool at TED and even I forbore from blazing away with my camera. Also at the table was Dan McClellan who is completing Oceans, which we had seen rushes of earlier in the day. I have never seen such an intimate look at the lives of ocean creatures. Easily the most costly and possibly the grandest documentary to date.

Tim Berners-Lee led the audience in a chant, "raw data now!" After singlehandedly inventing the World Wide Web Tim now wants to have free flowing raw data which he sees as more like human thought than the gigantic encyclopedia the Internet has become. Ray Anderson invented the mundane seeming carpet tile. But here is a manufacturer who isn't content to just make a product. His company is approaching a zero % carbon footprint. This segued into a presentation about the mummies of the Capuchin monastery in Palermo, Sicily. There we were looking inside an Italian tomb which spoke to culture, religion and taxidermy over the last four centuries. I have for many years been a big fan of the Capuchins who had the curious habit of turning the bones of their followers into furniture.

Willie Smits is Dutch Indonesian and he was a tremendous hit. Willie was in a village marketplace one day and found a sick orangutan dying in a trash heap. He nursed it back to health, gathered more of them and eventually established a sanctuary where there are now over a 1,000, but this isn't the whole story. From his husbandry of the apes he found creative ways to reforest vast stretches of jungle which have been laid to waste. Now years later his Masarang Foundation has reestablished agricultural people living in harmony with the natural environment.

Margaret Wertheim enchanted us with an unlikely topic. She crochets coral reefs. Margaret observed that coral, cactus and many other living creatures grow with hyperbolic geometry. This potato chip shape yields high surface areas. She began crocheting in wool a representation of a coral because of her passion for traditional female handcraft combined with a love of natural physics and concern for the threatened reefs. Hundreds heard her message and contributed wool coral for a vast exhibition presently on exhibit in L.A. I learned a fact that had thus far escaped me. Coral reefs grow atop extinct volcanoes at the same rate as the volcano’s cone degrades into the sea. A delicate balance indeed. Margaret and her sister Christine have established The Institute for Figuring to celebrate this and other arts. The reef is part AID’s quilt, part Bayeux Tapestry with shades of general relativity and sitting at Grandma’s knee.

Another presenter, Dale Chihuly, has made a reef too with his sexy, scintillating glass art; opposite yet complimentary to crocheted wool. Another expression is the monumental architecture of Daniel Libeskind. His controversial (could it have been any other way?) design for the rebuilding of the World Trade Center is all angles and sharp corners. In fierce opposition to the work of Frank Ghery. Daniel wants to struggle against improbabilities and sees his designs as a triumph of optimism over pessimism. A bold vocabulary for big ideas.

Shai Agassi presented his Better World electric car program. He wants to provide all the new cars for entire countries with replaceable batteries and projects a 2 cent a mile future. A charismatic speaker with a big following, but his numbers don’t add up even as his investors get in line to prove the critics wrong. Thank heavens for the big thinkers even those with unlikely ideas. They said man couldn’t fly too. At least one speaker was just plain wrong. Take respected Columbia professor Dickson Despommier’s scheme to build practical food farms in 30 story buildings in places like midtown Manhattan. I am very familiar with the costs and problems inherant in tall buildings and I can find no way into this idea. He gets very good press but like other technical schemes with crippling debilities the desire to make it so is not enough.

Jill founder of SETI was another TED prize winner. She and her team are scrubbing the cosmos for signs of life. Intended or unintended she is pursuing global harmony. A simple formula. Find intelligent life elsewhere and we feel as one here on Earth. Bonnie Bassler talked about bacterial communication. Those little buggers are communicating using a system called quorum sensing. They chemically twitter each other and we are beginning to understand their language. Nicholas Negroponte of MIT brought out his little green laptop that was a twinkly eye mote 3 years ago and now accounts for about half the laptops in the world. Talk about an idea worth spreading.
Elizabeth Gilbert wrote Eat Pray Love to huge acclaim and asked us to ponder what it might be like to be a creative person who might have her best work behind her. Elizabeth, no way kid! Jay Walker sang the phrases of the very flexible English language and showed us a video of 5,000 Chinese students learning to speak it in a single gigantic classroom. Scary and lovely. Other presenters included Sarah Jones who with her 14 NYC characters had us dying with laughter.

Small ideas, big ones, bigger ones and 1300 of my close friends. This is TED to me.

Newt Gingrich

Newt was visiting here in The Valley as he does from time to time. I asked to see his driver’s license and when I looked at it I asked him how we were supposed to believe a man who lies about his weight?

More noise on Green no one will read

IT ISN’T EASY BEING GREEN
“OK we’ve been peeing in the pool long enough. When it was just a few kids it was one thing but now that we are north of 7 billion we need to knock it off or the pool will be closed!”
Back in the 60s, hippies were preaching that we were wrecking the environment and there was a movement called going “back to the land”, as if had actually ever lived on the ‘land” in some previous life and not the suburbs most of us had actually grown up in. But they had their hearts in the right place even if raising goats for profit was really not going to pan out. My wife Margaret and I were a couple of those dreamy idealists. We moved to the country and put up a barn. We installed solar panels and composted everything is site. Margaret recycled when it was very hard to do. Our wooden-sided Morris Minor went 63 mph, got 38 mpg and we heated the house with wood and dogs (we still do). Fortunately we bought our land in the mountains overlooking Silicon Valley and not some backwater in eastern Idaho. Our scheme to raise buffalo (for what, hides?) didn’t exactly pan out. It seems they really do roam like the song says. So we got real jobs and here we are today.
Now the green revolution has caught up to where we were 35 years ago and everyone blinks with dilated eyes thinking its something new. It isn’t new but now it is more then a lifestyle. It’s necessary for life itself.
I just read an article by a leading editorialist, Paul Johnson, in Forbes. (I read Forbes because I want to see how old people think). Paul talks about the bogus global warming scam and he laments seeing newfangled power generating windmills wrecking his view. He discredits them as a medieval invention and not to be taken seriously. Of course printing was a medieval invention so maybe everything from that era isn’t so bad. It is simply beyond my ability to understand how some folks can complain that others are trying to tidy up the planet.
A big question many people wrestle with is: do people cause detrimental environment effects and if so how much? The answer is irrelevant. Slothful, pollution spewing lifestyles are not supportable on a personal or a societal level. Whether we are actually ruining the climate or not our lives are made less sustainable and ultimately less fun if we continue to pile up more patio furniture, appliances and all sorts of things that clutter out lives instead of making it more graceful. Will cleaning up the environment fix that? Not directly but decoupling from the couch and doing something more real than watching Dancing With The Stars might make a person more content.
Nearly everyone I talk to says TV is evil but they are in its grip and therefore, powerless. How did this devolve to a discussion of TV? Well TV is perfect example of an unsustainable model. It uses electricity to take control of one’s brain to stop one from experiencing actual life. TV makes you eat more and consume products you see advertised that until that point you didn’t even want (this isn’t you of course but, you know a guy who knows a guy who has three TVs or even five in a single home).
Today it seems that every topic (certainly when discussing the green movement) circles back to the economy. Who is responsible for our current state? We can blame the bankers. We can blame Wall Street or we can level our guns at the politicians. But the real culprit is much closer to home. Like Pogo said, “We have seen the enemy and it is us. “Let me say that by no means am I preaching. I am as much a part of the problem as any of us but I do recognize that we individuals, in concert with classic good ol’ American Capitalism, have created an untenable situation. We are both victims and beneficiaries of all the genetic evolution and cultural predispositions to acquire stuff. Once again TV is a perfect metaphor to see how stuff is driving us crazy. It is not uncommon to see three four or even five controllers on someone’s coffee table (perhaps we should call them control centers). Each of these controllers has dozens of buttons which open ever more screens giving us options for our viewing pleasure. This array of controllers give us hundreds of options. Couple this with all the other devices like cell phones, computers, cameras, cars, kitchens and we have hundreds of buttons we can push to control…what? Well just a few functions really. We have hundreds of buttons we never use and so many choices that there is no way to make the best one. Try picking the best digital camera from the hundreds of choices. Confront an unfamiliar microwave and it will stop you dead. In a commercial kitchen where intense cooking takes place a microwave doesn’t even have a start button just a dial with a minute hand. How did we get to the point where all out cool stuff is actually anti us? The free market is merely satisfying out desire to amass stuff, a normal human response. Instead of gathering more spear points and fur blankets we surround ourselves with more horsepower and ever more complicated gizmos that seem to be complex for the pleasure of the manufacturer trying to fool us with shiny buttons. Is it any wonder that folks take home loans that they can’t pay in the future? They are just trying to find shelter.
So am I against an unfettered free market? You bet I am. The free market gave us the great tobacco conspiracy where we were free to believe the great lie from the 40s and 50’s that doctors recommended cigarettes. Or car companies that fought the seat belt and airbag laws. Exactly were we put the pin in the map to establish the rules is the job of government but without serious punishment for lying and corrupting the information the process is crippled.
To a large extent it is the borrowing from our future that has gotten us a fix. If the future continues to be more lucrative than the past you can borrow today and pay back with more plentiful money later. But if the future turns out to not be bigger but the same size, or horrors, smaller then you have basically ate yer cookies up on day one of a four day camping trip.
It is impossible to separate the perpetrators and victims. We are locked in a tarantella of capitalism and desire and there is no clear path out of this crazy dance. We enjoy a society where the market is free to sell us things we really don’t want, bundled with the things we do. A large grocery store has as many as 10,000 things to eat. Most of the things are heavily processed foods because that’s the profitable and tasty stuff. Much of it is not good for the body and a lot of it really isn’t food but extracts of food with chemicals added to change the color, texture, taste and is, in fact, artificial food. The food industry is at war with us.
How can we get out of the forest of over-choice and over-consumption and find a way to sort out the beneficial from the harmful? Well, we actually have to march counter to our genetic imperative of gathering ever more stuff. Everyone seems to agree that more things don’t deliver more happiness yet we seem to keep piling it on. Just like watching your diet and exercise we need to ask ourselves if that next thing will bring us more joy or more anxiety. We have always been told that our economy must grow, that our piece of the action should get ever larger. Growth for growth sake! But is this really true? What if we just grow to full size - and live?

GOING GREEN

Tony Perkins played host to about 600 green entrepreneurs and venture types at the new Cavallo Center on the far side of the Golden Gate Bridge. Here is an old military base having been beaten into plowshares in the form a resort run by the estimable Post Ranch folks. It is very nice, in a Marin precious sort of way. The repurposed barracks with the broad lawn sweeping to the sea and the incoming sea is grand.
Chuck Reed the progressive mayor of San Jose told us about his big plans green up his city like no other city. He wants to do much more than be carbon neutral and his plan was well articulated when he spoke at Going Green. It is well worth a look. You can go to the web site and see the entire program and Chuck’s plan in particular. Chuck is so green he’s getting black and blue trying to find the money to put his proposals into action.
The conference brought folks from all corners of the green movement, except ironically the hippies who have either moved deep into woods or morphed into real people. What constitutes green anyway? Well, in the Sept 11th issue of Time Magazine Scot Case with TerraChoice surveyed products in an unnamed big box store that claimed a green component. From Time, “The results were startling: of the 1,018 products they surveyed, all but one failed to live up fully to their green boasts. Words like nontoxic were used in meaninglessly vague ways. Terms like Energy Star Certified were in fact not backed up by certification. And the list of bogus claims went on. This is one small corner of the green movement and it illustrates the unregulated atmosphere we see today.”
There is both a great deal of duplication with overlapping technologies coupled with uncertainty in the markets in the green movement. Many of the green companies are hardware and personnel intense. Focusing on solar electric gives a good illustration. Making solar equipment is a long term play. Firms need at least four years of financial support and in the case of large solar arrays as much as 10 years. The solar entrepreneurs are hoping for at least part of the subsidies that the fossil fuel and nuclear industry have gotten over the years but even though the long awaited federal tax credits have been renewed it is a slim lifeline for these vital solutions.
Because so many of energy systems are large infrastructure plays it is essential that there be a floor below which energy pricing cannot fall or the companies will not mature. In the 70’s there was a solar movement. There were actually solar panels on the White House installed by Carter but Reagan laughed them off the roof and that made sense in the cheap oil era. Without a price floor, solar electric companies are reluctance to invest the money necessary to launch large array plants. As a result this business has moved to other countries. Germany and Japan are not known as particularly sunny spots but these countries along with Australia and Israel are running hard to bring ever increasing solar electric power on line.
It is unfathomable why politicians don’t get behind solar unless they are subject to skin cancer and actually hate the sun. Some folks are big behind renewing the nuclear option blindly forgetting that we never solved the disposal or dispersal problem. To pick life-killing gamma rays over life-giving visible light rays is environmentally, socially and economically inexpedient, unless you are in the pocket of these concerns. The actual cost of fuel must be totaled by adding cost of extraction, pollution and sustainability. Fossil fuels are limited, polluting, and will run out. Biofuels take tremendous amounts of machinery, land, water and processing. Wave power is very limited and has serious hardware problems. Wind is a good option but it involves big equipment with many moving parts and ever increasing environments problems of its own. Some of these mills are being designed with 400 foot blades that make a good deal of noise and don’t seem to turn when on the hottest days when peak power is required Only solar, and large desert array solar, has the potential to free us from the problems of the fuels above. Few moving parts, proven technology and free fuel forever when it is needed on the hottest days.

Bill Clinton lamented on the John Stewart show recently that if we had had the imagination seven years ago to go solar we would have a great deal less incentive to keep the oil producing in clover. We could have halved our oil imports, slashed our outflow of currency, created jobs and cleaned up the pool.
Co hosting the Going Green conference was none other than Scientific American. I was able to spend time with an old friend and one time next door neighbor from the Upper West side in NYC Bruce Brandfon who was then a reporter for Mother Jones Magazine and now is the publisher of Scientific American.
Scientific American has a new magazine to go with their 165 year old one. It’s called Earth 3.0 and is all over the green topic. It brings the gravity of the SA crew to this relatively new topic. Hummm maybe Paul Johnson will consider writing a column.
Solar and large array solar is a particular area of interest to me. Scientific American had a cover story in January where there was a good rundown on the notion that we could replace all the electricity we generate from fossil fuel with solar collectors. The authors proposed that we store energy as pressurized air underground to be used to run turbines at night. In fact there are many different large array schemes which use everything from concentrating mirrors to boil water to run turbines to parabolic concentrators powering high temp photovoltaic. Different systems answer different climate considerations but one thing is sure, the best places to put the systems is in high sun areas. The problem is we don’t have extra grid capacity to ship the power. It is practical to send power high voltages from thousands of miles but we need the wires to do it. Around 700 billion might pretty much cover this…oh gosh we just spent that. Darn, just missed it. Well since we are using the “T” word we have to ask ourselves and our politicians if we really believe in the future and if the answer is yes the obvious solution is solar.
John O’Donnell most recently of Ausra a large array solar firm that is building a PG&E plant near in Southern California) brought the muscle of Kleiner Perkins to bear on this problem by securing financing from Vinod Kosla, also a speaker at the conference. John and I were recently lamenting the state of energy development and commiserating on how far we have to go to get on a sustainable energy footing. He is working on projects that will lower the sea level from its rising future. John’s figure for how much land is needed to install an array that would power the entire U.S. grid is 92 sq miles of land (a trivial amount of desert land available in America).
John makes the point that changing light bulbs is a small act and many small acts will add up to a lot of small changes. We need big changes so perhaps we should focus on changing politicians not light bulbs.
I think that it is tragically misguided that we are trying to beat the price of gasoline back. We need high gasoline prices to encourage multiple car passengers. But won’t just the rich be able to drive? Well take Europe where the cars are tiny and the people seem happy enough.
For a full account of how we can fix our economy, get out of oil jail and create millions of jobs check out Van Johnson’s new book The Greencoller Economy.

TED 2008 .

I had the great privilege of attending the TED conference again this year. TED stands for Technology Entertainment and Design. This singular event brings together great thinkers from all over the world…and me. The text is a three and a half day conference where charismatic speakers, artists and all sorts of optimists, skeptics, believers and off the chartists come to the stage all day long and tell about their passions.

Jill Bolter Taylor is a neurologist who, in the style of a research doctor crossed with a revival preacher, told us about her harrowing experience with a brain aneurism. She was both doctor and patient and her delivery was at once chilling and uplifting. She was a standout in an outstanding crowd.

The theme this year was Big Questions like What Is Life? Who better to discuss this than Craig Venter, the genome guy. Craig both thrilled and alarmed a good many of us. He is attempting to create artificial life and some feel that his alchemy may lead to chaotic outcomes that are the stuff of horror films. Myself, I feel his defense a bit dubious when asked how he would keep microbes under control. He more or less said, just to trust him. Some, though, see him as the possible savior of mankind by developing microbes that sequester carbon or offer beneficial pharmaceuticals or new biofuels. Look him up online and you will see why he is at the center of Big Ideas.

Thomas Kerns of the Guggenheim showed us ambitious plans to put a Guggenheim Museum in every garage, that is if it is a Middle Eastern garage. There are several new museums with that brand around the world and many more planned. Who would have imagined that? Where will all the art come from…hum I guess we will just have to make more art. That sounds like a good idea for all concerned.

Several physicists were displaying their wares. Garrett Lisi being one of them. He is working on a grand unified field theory while surfing the great beaches around the world. Since much of this work is thought experiments this is actually doable. In the April issue of Scientific American Lisi is alternately called a genius and a crackpot and that by biggies in the field. Much fun to play witness to. Well, someone is probably going to crack that Big Idea and it would be great if it is the surfing physicist.

Neil Turok is a physicist of a different stripe who holds the mathematical chair in physics at Cambridge. He’s a cosmologist concerned with the inflationary period after the Big Bang. Neil is a multiverse man. If I understand him correctly he postulates that the BB was a result of two universes colliding and instead of coming from nothing came from a whole lot of something. Neil was a TED prize winner for his promotion of science curriculum in Africa. The study of physicists (I think this would be called physicistology) who put forward these grand ideas about the nature of reality is a particular interest of mine. There are so many theories bumping into one another and we must not forget that of all the competing theories of reality only one, at most, can be right. I certainly can’t tell you which one but we have seen ideas nailed in place by Aristotle, Newton and Einstein come loose over time. As the quantum and celestial mechanics toil under the hood of the big machine we seem to lean toward righter then wronger though.

As you can see there was some pretty detailed science at TED. Robert Lang brought us back to earth then shattered our understating of a different kind of space-time continuum. He is an origami artist who, using a computer program, can take a simple sheet of paper and turn it into a near living piece of sculpture. I half imagined he was just using magic and I had to ice my brain to follow along with him. He was followed by John Knoll (the programmer of Photoshop) of Industrial Light and Magic. He showed how the marvelous special effects in the movies today are made possible using tools he is developing.

Isaac Mizrahi the clothing designer/lounge act gave a funny scattered talk about his funny scattered life. I heard one person comment that they found it strange that this fellow was at such a highbrow event. (I’ll bet they say that about me) but I find him very now, urban and highly amusing. He’s a sort of a Judy Garland crooked-smile talent but with less tragedy.

David Griffin and Wade Davis of National Geographic projected large images of this nifty planet we call home. When you see nature photography made big it has a lasting impact and brings home the fact that this is the planet, this one right under our feet, is the one we are all concerned with keeping clean.

Benjamin Zander is the conductor of the Boston Philharmonic but he is much more than a conductor. In fact, he is a force of nature. Here we are at TED where one of the mandates is to explore how to save the world while celebrating culture. Zander gave a riveting talk about the relevance of music and then tossed out handfuls of the words to Beethoven’s Ode to Joy from the 9th, to the audience. He insisted everyone sing along and, like a patient teacher, made us start over five times until, we got it right. This coincidently (perhaps) is the theme music from Kubrick’s Clockwork Orange which basically put paid to the modern world. A rich, rollicking and memorable experience.

Then Al Gore. Here is a towing figure of our time. Articulate, funny and looking like a central casting image of a world leader. We simultaneously celebrate him and lament what might have been had they been able to count the votes in Florida. He is a TED regular and his message sharpens every time he points out our clear folly with regard to our stewardship of the Big Blue Marble. Unlike some political figures Al Gore’s image seems to purify over time and hearing him is real pleasure.

Harvard astronomer Roy Gould and Microsoft’s Curtis Wong announced for the first time the World Wide Telescope. Fly through the galaxies and zoom to the edge of the universe. Bloglidite Robert Scoble said it made him cry when he first saw it. Hey, don’t get it on the keyboard, Bob! Now we have for the heavens what Google did for the Earth.

It isn’t all serious at TED although there are messages in everything. Nellie McKay is a singer who strolled onto the stage with an air of confusion, her tiny self dressed like a nice mom on her way to a baby shower. She stepped up to the grand piano and proceeded to thrash it within an inch of the wood pile as she belted, crooned, and purred her provocative, sexy and, to some, offensive lyrics (go Nellie). She wowed me but I know a couple of people who felt put upon when she skewered women’s lib. Sacred cows taste best. Well this is what makes TED what it is. Generally I am not fond of is being a fan. Bandwagons, team spirit and even yelling at kid’s soccer makes me feel uneasy but at TED I am a fan, a participant and I feel lucky to be able to be there.

Thomas Dolby heads up the house band and they play between the speakers. Other musicians and comedians are layered in as well. This offers a way to change direction and keep the synapses firing on all 8 cylinders or maybe four with battery back up.

Chris Jordan is a photographer who I first met at sea when he had the helm of a 120 foot schooner off the coast of Maine. We were sailing in the Penobscot Bay with a group of environmentalists and we were disheartened by the fact that the fisheries had been so devastated in that area. The Grand Banks had been the richest fishery in the world and now the only thing taken commercially is the lobster. Ironically this great delicacy is a kind of marine cockroach which subsists on garbage. Chris is a photographer who highlights the plight of the planet with his pictures of the material world. He takes a snippet of time, say an hour or a day and produces huge composite prints of how many plastic bags are used in a minute or how many airplane con trails would fill the skies in a given time. His work left a deep impression in my forehead.

The TED stage was decorated , festooned even with some of the cultural artifacts collected by Jay Walker (founder of Priceline). These included a page from a Gutenberg Bible, a real sputnik and various Paleolithic skulls. As you can see if you look around Buck’s I am a great believer in stuff. “Hey, Jay I’ll trade you a Soviet Space suit for your space toilet”.

The road to TED after 24 years will make a great movie one day. It was founded by a Richard Saul Wurman, a wild man who is reputedly both a loveable and an unrepentant rascal. After nearly 20 years he gave up the reigns and Chris Anderson (formerly of Woodside and founder of Business 2.0) became the curator of the event and it seems there was a falling out over some issue that left Richard feeling bruised. In a grand and heartfelt segment he came back and was warmly embraced in every respect by Chris and the gathering, including a few who had been there at the very beginning. TED is about inclusion and participation. One of the parts I found the most compelling was a simple question and answer segment about the shape of TED in the future. People had elaborate ideas on where they thought the conference should head and you could tell that the participants felt deeply connected.

After the long days with all the various breakout opportunities there is of course a party or ten each night. There were stars from The Valley as well as real movie stars (there goes the neighborhood). I was chatting with Forrest Whitaker about a new movie he is making and I think the Hollywood folk felt comfortable as no one had the bad taste to pose them for photos (much as I wanted to).

Bob Ballard the deep sea explorer (found the Titanic, PT 109 and many more) is the Galileo of underwater exploration and he took around the Big Below in his deep sea rovers. After diving to depth we spent some time in the trees with an arboreal explorer Richard Preston who spends days at a time in the tops of redwoods 40 stories in the air including climbing Hyperion the tallest living thing. He described to us the ancient ecology in these tress but he is really up in the branches because, like so many presenters at TED, he finds that his passion plugs him directly into the vibrant grid of life.

Nissim Taleb brought us his strangely compelling but annoying idea that cataclysmic events are solely the result of cataclysmic events beyond our ability to predict and that all people (except for himself) are …more or less, fools. I read his book the Black Swan and am not convinced but he persuades many and his bravado is fun to watch.

At one point there was a panel of luminaries assembled to discuss “the new media.” It was to be broadcast live by the BBC but there was a technical problem so the group just sat on the stage in front of about 1,000 people waiting for the uplink. Then someone started heckling from the audience in a heavy Scottish accent. Everyone turned to see Robin Williams giving the stage-bound panel a hard time. Up he sprung and filled the void with an buzzsaw of quick cuts that left us in tears like ‘we are here with a live debate that is not being televised, much like the last 6 years in this country”.

For me the most important presentation of the event was a surprise from the noted MIT musician/composer Tod Machover. Death and the Powers is an opera scheduled to premiere in Monaco in 2009 that Tod has composed about a rich guy who downloads himself into a computer with the idea of living forever. The staging of the opera includes a luminous library of moving, glowing books and robots running about the stage. It is a relevant topic about the near future. It is ironic that when Machover isn’t developing his opera he is working on communication tools with Dan Ellsey who is profoundly handicapped and is locked in a body with only a glowing light stick attached to his head for communication which he uses to point to his computer. With this tool he is able to compose and perform music which he did for the TED audience. So here is opera about downloading a person into a computer and in real life Tod is working on behalf of a man who he is up loading from a damaged body into life. Here they all were on stage with machinery and several people all to the benefit of a single man brought out with great difficulty by special airplane from the east. I have always wondered at the social ramifications of a great deal of effort to the benefit of a single handicapped person. Then it struck me that it wasn’t just about Dan. In fact it was about all those involved on stage, those back at home, others - who might dream about being freed from all sorts of limitations and even about me. It was a grand opera to see Dan enjoying his ability to perform for this group of interested people. So I have a new and much less judgmental view of this process.

Over the years I have been lucky enough to have been a participant in Love-ins in the 60’s and later antiwar marches, Burning Man, Esalen and TED. These are all hotbeds of learning and compassion and amazingly none of these offer any diplomas. So after attending 23 elementary schools, two high schools and five colleges and universities the only diploma I have is from Perfect Paws a dog training school. Heck I’ll never be able to get a job.

(In the pictures for search: Bill Joy, Pierre Omidyar, Larry page, Gino Yu, David Blaine, Max Levchin, Dean Kamen, Zem and James Joaquin)