True Broadband: Vermont vs. Wisconsin

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Tom Evslin:

An hour or so ago the Vermont House and Senate both gave final approval to a bill designed to make Vermont the nation’s first e-state. As defined in Vermont, e-stateness means cellular and adequate broadband coverage – fixed and mobile – everywhere in the state by 2010. The initial definition of adequate fixed broadband is 3 megabits per second service in at least one direction; but the bill contains a mechanism for ratcheting that up as requirements escalate. It is estimated that this requirement may be as high as 20 megabits in both directions by 2013.
Although the bill passed the Vermont House with an overwhelming 132-2 vote more than a month ago, it was by no means assured of passage. Vermont’s citizen legislature is hoping to adjourn for the year sometime tonight. There was a danger that the Senate would not have the time it needed to consider all aspects of this very large bill. But they did!

Quite a contrast to Wisconsin’s process, where AT&T’s stagnant infrastructure (and more importantly, their lobbying prowess) carries the day. Gotta love our forward thinking politicians.

Recent Rental Cars: 2007 Mazda Miata

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The rental car counter presented a simple choice for my “compact” reservation: Mazda Miata or Minivan. I put the top down and began my journey with an ’07 Miata. Quick summary: better than I expected, particularly in the acceleration department, but….. uncertain handling at upper end highway speeds.
Decent seats, useful controls, easy to use convertible top and…. 27mpg after a mix of highway and suburban driving. Unfortunately, I’ve yet to see a rental car without an automatic transmission. A six speed manual Miata would have been much more interesting.
Much more on the Mazda Miata here.

I-80: Inverse Traffic Therapy

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I read with interest two recent posts regarding Madison’s traffic congestion. I, too have a fleeting moment or two when I consider Madison’s growing traffic congestion. It is difficult to use the words “Madison” together with “traffic congestion” after one has experienced the real, big city version. The photo above was taken recently while stuck in traffic on I-80. We’re a long way from that. Regional growth certainly makes our transportation system a rather useful topic for discussion and action. My dream? TGV type train service connecting Chicago, Madison, Milwaukee and Minneapolis.

A Better Cheddar?

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George Raine:

On the outskirts of Modesto, John Fiscalini, with an assist from cheesemaker Mariano Gonzalez, makes the world’s best extra-mature traditional cheddar.
You can look it up. In the World Cheese Awards held in London in March, an 18-month-old cheddar from Fiscalini Cheese Co. was awarded the trophy in the category, the first time in the contest’s 20 years that a British entry didn’t win.
Down the road from Fiscalini Farms, in Hilmar (Merced County), Hilmar Cheese Co. operates the world’s largest cheese and whey-products manufacturing facility. The company makes 1.4 million pounds of cheese every day and will make 500 million pounds this year. It produces 1 out of every 8 pounds of cheddar and Monterey Jack made in the nation.
California cheese production is on a roll. The state is about to pass Wisconsin — America’s Dairyland — as the nation’s leading cheesemaker.

Stornetta’s – Northern California.

Saying No in Saudi Arabia

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Frances Linzee Gordon:

‘A guest is a gift from God’ goes the popular Arab saying. The hospitality of the Middle East is legendary, and Saudi Arabia had proved no exception. During our weeks on the road and over the course of the 11,250km we clocked up, our car had become so stuffed full with presents that I now called it ‘Abdullah’s mobile bazaar’.
We stocked everything from the choicest dates and most luxuriously packaged boxes of chocolates to lavish coffee-table books, the finest coffee beans and even a pearl necklace. Saudi generosity was overwhelming, and it did not seem in any danger of dwindling.
The Red Sea port of Jeddah was our final destination. Considered the most cosmopolitan town in the Kingdom – and somewhat wild, degenerate and dangerous by the country’s more conservative kinsmen – Jeddah had a palpably relaxed, seen-it-all air. On the private beaches outside town, we even came across bikini-clad girls on jet skis.

Fascinating.

Famous Opinions

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Summarized by Barry Ritholtz:

“Man will never reach the moon regardless of all future scientific advances.”
-Dr. Lee DeForest, “Father of Radio & Grandfather of Television.”
“The Atomic bomb will never go off. I speak as an expert in explosives.”
-Admiral William Leahy, US Atomic Bomb Project
“There is no likelihood man can ever tap the power of the atom.”
-Robert Millikan, Nobel Prize in Physics, 1923
“Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons.”
-Popular Mechanics, forecasting the relentless march of science, 1949
“I think there is a world market for maybe five computers .”
-Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943
“I have traveled the length and breadth of this country and talked with the best people, and I can assure you that data processing is a fad that won’t last out the year.”
-The editor in charge of business books for Prentice Hall, 1957

Sometimes the Stock Does Better Than the Investor That Buys the Stock

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Hal Varian:

Stocks have been a great investment in the last 80 years, with an average return of about 10 percent a year. But have investors in the stock market done as well as stocks? Surprisingly, the answer is no. The average dollar invested in the stock market in those years has earned only about 8.6 percent a year.
The discrepancy between stock market return and investor return is examined by Ilia D. Dichev, a University of Michigan accounting professor, in a paper published in the March 2007 edition of The American Economic Review, “What Are Stock Investors’ Actual Historical Returns? Evidence From Dollar-Weighted Returns.”
To understand the difference between a stock’s return and an investor’s return, consider someone who buys 100 shares of a company at a price of $10 a share. A year later, the share price is up to $20, and the investor buys 100 more shares.
Alas, the investor’s luck has run out. By the end of the next year, the price has fallen back to $10 and the investor sells his 200 shares.
A buy-and-hold investor who bought at $10, held the stock for two years, and then sold at $10 would have had a zero return.

Facing economic realities of muni Wi-Fi

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Dewayne Hendricks:

In the movement to blanket cities with Wi-Fi, economic realities are setting in as service providers look to tweak their business models to turn a profit. Since the municipal Wi-Fi movement started taking shape a couple of years ago, politicians, community organizers and the companies building the networks have touted Wi-Fi as a cheap solution to a myriad social and economic problems plaguing cities today. Some cities see it as a way to bridge the digital divide, while others see Wi-Fi as providing a third alternative to a broadband market dominated by the cable and phone companies. Up to this point, the financial risk has mostly fallen on the service providers that have put up the capital to build the wireless mesh networks.

Obama Blows it on MySpace

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John Robb:

Micah Sifry has a great example of how the Obama campaign staff crushed a volunteer that had generated a huge following on MySpace. When the site Joe Anthony had sweated over reached epic proportions, the Obama campaign decided they needed to take control. So rather than hire the guy (or even fly out to meet him to interview/qualify him for the job) or even pay him a nominal sum ($40 k or so, for years of labor, a bargain no matter how you cut it), they went to MySpace (a company they were paying oodles to to help them promote the campaign at levels much less than Anthony’s site) to seize control of the it.

Robb has a new book out “Brave New War“, worth checking out.
OTOH, he’s done the right thing on debate media, via Lessig.