It’s the 21st Century, Stupid!

Rupert Murdoch has basically completed his acquisition of the Wall Street Journal. Newsweek says it means all-out war. My first thought was “Eee-e-ew!!” and a reflexive holding of my nose. My second thought was that at least the opinion section wouldn’t have to change because it’s already to Murdoch’s taste.

I don’t think I really need to say a whole lot about this one. Just read this article from Newsweek entitled “Surge of Suicide Bombers” and then follow it with the one from the New York Times entitled “Top G.O.P. Candidates See Signs of Progress in Iraq”. I just have to say I wonder about some people’s ideas of progress and their definition of victory.

Also in this morning’s Star was an op-ed on oil company hypocrisy concerning their refusal to install equipment to handle the hot fuel issue. For those who might not be aware of this, it is a simple fact of physics/chemistry that when liquids or gases are heated they take up more volume. this applies to pretty much everything much less volatile liquids like gasoline. So when you buy gasoline on a day like today around here, when it’s going to reach 96°F and it’s been that warm for days, you are in reality getting less actual fuel for your vehicle than the pumps are measuring out since it measures by volume. The oil companies scream loudly about the idea of replacing pumps with ones that can adjust to account for this fact. They say that it would cost too much. Customers aren’t really being hurt by it. The litany is long.

A commenter on the article said that he just doesn’t see where there is any hypocrisy involved. Apparently he missed the very telling part about oil company operations in Canada. There they do not complain about pumps that adjust for temperature at all. In Canada, where the temperature differential has to do with “cold” fuel instead of “hot” fuel the pumps work in their financial favor instead of hurting their customers. Hypocritical, indeed.

OTOH, the Star had in its editorial pages this morning this piece by Senator Christopher Bond. I’m torn between yawning at the sheer boredom at the constant repitition of the same tired RNC approved statements and being appalled that we have so many Republicans in office who still produce them. Long ago I voted for Bond for Governor in his early days when he presented a reasonable Republican facade. This has dropped away long ago and I will vote for his opponent when he’s up for re-election and can only hope that he meets the same fate as the junior Repubican Senator met last year.

The Kansas City Star has a great feel-good story in today’s paper right on the front page. In Drexel Missouri the Irbys were a fairly typical family. But then Shannon, a stay at home mom was diagnosed with a particularly nasty form of cancer. In the 100 days that she was out of town for treatment the town got together, razed the family’s almost 100 year old 2 bedroom home and built a new one from scratch. I particularly enjoyed the part where a contractor asked to help build a crawlspace for them refused to do so. In his opinion nothing less than a full basement would do and he proceeded to contribute his company’s labor and a concrete company contributed the materials. This wasn’t done for a television show (Though I’m not about to criticize that show given the good they’ve done.) it was just a town doing something amazing for their own. I stand in awe of them.

No, this is not some evil socialist, pinko, “I hate America.” screed. It’s not about the Bush Administration, Iraq or any of those subjects.

It’s about a New York Times article about how it is entirely possible for a millionaire, someone who is making enough money to propel themselves into the top 2% of American families so far as wealth is concerned, to not even consider themselves as being rich. I know some people who live in the San Francisco area. Frankly, I don’t ask them how much they make but it is always a source of amazement to me that they can make it given the cost of living there. But the article points out that there is more at work in the social dynamics of Silicon Valley. There is not so much a “keeping up with the Joneses” issue as knowing what the Joneses have. This psychological factor in an area of so much wealth makes some feel like they aren’t all that high up the economic food chain even if the raw numbers say different.

One of the people interviewed for this article puts it into perspective this way

David Koblas, a computer programmer with a net worth of $5 million to $10 million, imagines what his life would be like if he left Silicon Valley. He could move to a small town like Elko, Nev., he says, and be a ski bum. Or he could move his family to the middle of the country and live like a prince in a spacious McMansion in the nicest neighborhood in town.

But Mr. Koblas, 39, lives with his wife, Michelle, and their two children in Los Altos, south of Palo Alto, where the schools are highly regarded and the housing prices are inflated accordingly. So instead of a luxury home, the family lives in a relatively modest 2,000-square-foot house — not much bigger than the average American home — and he puts in long hours at Wink, a search engine start-up founded in 2005.

“I’d be rich in Kansas City,” he said. “People would seek me out for boards. But here I’m a dime a dozen.”

And he’s right. When Sprint was a rapidly growing concern and was consolidating operations in the Kansas City metro area they were shutting down IT operations in California and trying to lure their people to Kansas City. They would bring them here and show them what their housing budget could buy. They could purchase a house twice the size with a backyard facing a lake and the development had a golf course as part of the deal for less than they were spending in California. It was a persuasive argument to many.

Why do I title this post “A Slice of American Insanity”? First, what kind of technology company can be taken seriously as doing the best they can for their stockholders when they stay someplace that drives their costs for real estate and employee compensation to these kinds of levels? The standard excuses are that this is where everyone is and that this produces advantages and the educational system producing good tech workers is also here and it just can’t be reproduced anywhere else. Isn’t it nice to have arguments that your board and shareholders buy into that just can’t be quantified? And these folks are some of the staunchest defenders of the free market system and existing structures for all things economic. Also, why do companies whose life blood is technology feel so strongly that e-mail, phone calls and video conferencing just aren’t good enough? They don’t seem to mind it when they outsource jobs to India and China? That distance doesn’t seem to matter but the idea of just maybe placing their company or at least some major components of it somewhere in the United States that could save many millions of dollars terrifies them. Yep, they’re irrational and just maybe certifiable.

…since I wrote anything here, something I certainly hope to avoid in the future. I have also opened a new account with a hosting service and plan on using WordPress there to add some things and just do a slightly different format. As a reminder to anyone who’s actually read some previous things here I still never plan on this blog being either my personal journal or a blog that focuses on one field exclusively. Some say that in order to be successful this is what you should do in order to draw a specific audience. Oh, well. If they’re right no matter what I do it’s not going to ever reach the heights of web traffic but I will slog on even if I find myself buying a “No one reads my blog.” t-shirt.