North and South Korea exchange fire

A brief update that I'm sure you're all aware of: North Korea fired artillery on Yeonpyeong Island while South Korean marines were engaged in a military exercise there.  It sounds like two ROK marines were killed and they returned fire on the North with unknown effect.  So far the verbal response by the South Korean president Lee Myung-Bak has been very aggressive.  It is my opinion that South Korea should respond to this attack in the way they should have responded to the sinking of the Cheonan-- a decisive and disproportionate counter-attack (e.g. destroy North Korea's naval capabilities and/or decisive strikes on North Korea's artillery forces).  It is also my opinion that the United States should be right along side in this response to reaffirm our commitments to our South Korean allies. 

Bullet Trains, Light Metro, Mass Transit and America

This article from time.com about Obama's funding of high-speed rail tickles one of my secret ambitions: competitive mass transit in America.  Whoah, whoah, whoah, you're saying... You're thinking I'm a small government guy.  I've said I'm no republican but that I am definitely conservative economically.  The thing is, I've established that I have no problem paying the government in exchange for certain services, and infrastructure is one of those things.  I realize that in a laissez-faire capitalist economy roads and rails still get built by entities that need them at some point, and get maintained... somehow... At least in the interest of the market.  I just don't quite buy it... I actually believe there are some questions the free market fails to answer in a way.  As far as I'm concerned mass transit is one of those things.

If you try to frame a mass transit solution as a normal business problem you run into a sort of paradox.  It only works if you have enough riders to make it efficient and you only get enough riders when the service level reaches a point that entices people to become riders.  A capitalist would say that the market would select that solution if it made sense, but I'm convinced that any reasonable business man would look at the investment and tell you to take a hike.  The market economy didn't build the Interstate Highway System (Uncle Sam did), but I'm sure glad we have it now.  I feel the same way about mass transit, and personally very much favor rail. 

I spent a year of college living in Tokyo, Japan, and it made me a firm believer in the social benefits of efficient mass transit.  I'm guessing there are few or no cities with a more extensive rail network than Tokyo.  If you're interested, here is a rail map of Tokyo in English.  Then there's intercity train service in Japan, from the famed bullet trains (actually called Shinkansen) to commuter electric trains on shorter routes.  And if that's not interesting enough, the thing I found truly staggering was that smaller Japanese cities and towns also have rail service... Admittedly that's easier in a country as densely populated as Japan, if compared to the vast spaces Americans live in.  But maybe it sets a dreamer to dreamin' a little bit. 

As it happens, I remember the day that Obama announced he'd fund high speed rail investment.  Initially it elicited a sort of anti-socialist/anti-big government groan from me... But I read the article twice.  I stared intently at the maps they released.  I dug a little deeper into internet resources to research what they were thinking.  It set me to dreamin'.  Ever since I can't help but spend some small amount of time each day to imagining better rail service (intercity and local service) in America, and despite my capitalist proclivities I think government resources are the best route to getting it. 

Book Review: Good to Great

Title: Good to Great
Author: Jim Collins
Reviewed Format: Hardcover
Pages: 260
Rating: 5 Stars

Review: This is a great book.  I went in a little skeptical... When everyone talks about how great a book is (and when the executive office of your employer is said to carry it around in their uh... knapsacks?) it always makes me question the hype and take a closer look than I maybe otherwise would.  Great expectations, and all that.  Well, this is a great book, but I'm not sure how many people actually get the message when they read the thing based on my own conversations with and observations of people who tout its message. 

Jim Collins and a team of 20 other researchers affiliated with the University of Colorado Graduate School with the stated mission of studying companies which had established a baseline of merely good results (market average) but suddenly underwent some kind of seemingly major transformation and became great companies that sustained results for at least 15 years after the transformation event.  The team made a very conscious decision to ignore their own biases and preconceptions and try to analyze their data and findings objectively-- what they found shocked them (and me).

I think the collective "we" (Jim Collins, et al., included) imagined that they'd find companies helmed by rockstar CEOs, radical transition plans, excellent management of said transition, and drastic transformations.  What they found instead-- and in EVERY ONE of their eleven subjects (the only found eleven companies that met their good-to-great criteria)-- was that the transformation was actually a very starting one that gained more and more momentum as the becoming-great company pushed on their figurative flywheel (one of the books central concept).  The book has seven chapters each about a specific concept, but several of them really cover a lot of the same ground and I would say there's really three central lessons to be had from this book.  They are:

1. Level 5 Leadership - humble leaders who direct all of their sizable ambition towards building a great company... And hire people like them with a focus on values instead of on skills.  (The book categorizes these as "disciplined thought.")
2. Hedgehog Concept - understand what your company can be great at and focus only on those things.  Do not tolerate people who don't understand this or what it implies. (The book categorizes these as "disciplined action.")

3. A Culture of Discipline - When you've worked on the above to concepts the next part should be easy, but is essentially a business culture that becomes determined or even fanatic about hiring the right kind of people for the job and adhering to the Hedgehog Concept.

What it all really boils down to, is getting the right people on the bus AND the wrong people off the bus and the rest of it will tend to fall in place.  Of course the book itself has numerous examples and data to support the findings of the research teams' findings and is well enough written to be a clear and easy read.  The attribute I found most compelling was the fact that the research turned up the same factors and steps for every one of their subject companies so as far as data goes it was extremely clear to me that they are really on to something.  As I consider the actions and performance of the company I work for, it has become impossible to view them without constantly evaluating them against the findings of this book.  I very highly recommend this book for anyone interested in what makes some companies great.  (5 stars)

Kevin Costner... apparently comes through on oil spill techonology???

CNN Article

We all had a good-natured laugh when news broke that Kevin Costner, of all people, was going to be presenting his company's oil spill clean up technology to congress.  Turns out we should've taken the man seriously... BP has decided to order 32 of these machines and apparently they will allow cleanup crews to get oil out of the water much more quickly and efficiently.  It's a surprise, to be sure, but evidently Costner's brother is a scientist and they've been working on this since the 1990s.  So, in any case, well done, Kevin Costner... And, uh, keep doing your part to stave off Waterworld.

Japan's PM Hatoyama Resigns & Thoughts on US Military Presence on Okinawa

It was announced today that Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama is resigning his post most likely due to his failure to uphold is promise to remove the US military presence from Okinawa.  He did try to address the issue but ultimately decided that the base would stay.  It's a reasonable question to consider if he made the decision due to pressure from the US, Japanese security concerns, or concerns specific to conditions on Okinawa itself.

The US Military Presence on Okinawa is very extensive.  According to wikipedia there are 14 seperate installations covering 233 sq. km, which is about 18% of the main island.  Of the 40,000 US personnel stationed in Japan, around 2/3 are on Okinawa.  The overwhelming majority of Okinawans are opposed to the military presence due to environmental and noise concerns, occasional crime by US servicemen, and other such factors.  I can hardly blame them... From the numbers above it would seem like you'd be hard pressed to look anywhere without seeing the US military.

Does it make sense to move the military assets?  Probably does.  The US has interest in military presence in Japan for geographic reasons... Japan commands a lot of the access to the Pacific from the Asian side.  Japanese interest lies in the US military presence reducing their own expenditure on defense to an extremely low level.  Okinawa also has some interest in the presence, I think, as I'd imagine the troops contribute a fair amount to their economy (though I don't really know that for sure).  Finally, all parties should be keenly interested in maintaining one of the world's most important military alliances, so some solution should be found.  It seems to me like the military assets should be redistributed to other parts of Japan (or throughout the Pacific Theatre).  Based on Okinawa's location, it's probably important maintain an airbase there, but it seems to me like the rest of the bases could go.

Lunar Solar Powerplant

Courtesy of this gizmodo post I've learned of a Japanese firm, Shimizu, that would like to use robots to fabricate a solar power plant they call Luna Ring.  The Luna Ring would be built by robots using mostly material from the moon itself and cover the equator of the moon with solar panels to collect the power of sunlight without concerns about weather conditions or the atmosphere that reduces solar panel efficiency here on earth.  Luna Ring would then beam the power to earth via lasers or microwaves.

The idea is a little similar to one of my favorite pet energy concepts: space-based solar power, which I think offers one of the better chances for reasonably clean and renewable power on earth.  It may even be easier or cheaper to accomplish when you consider the fact that you won't have to lift materials into orbit.  In any case, it's merely concept now, and we'll have to keep working towards this and other forms of power (fuel cells or fusion power or something else) until one becomes practical enough that we can ween ourselves off of our fossil fuel addiction.

Clarification on Korea and China

I had an opportunity to talk to Dusty a bit last night regarding the escalating tensions between North and South Korea, and it became clear that I'd been unclear on what I meant by referring to China as the wildcard in the situation... I will try to clear up what I think about China's role in Korea here.

North Korea is something of a vassal state to China.  Without China's support, North Korea would almost surely collapse.  I believe most of North Korea's energy and food come from across the Yalu River.  What, then, is North Korea to China?  Well, historically it was a military and ideological ally.  When the Korean War went against the North Koreans, China invaded Korea to push back UN mandated forces resulting in setbacks and a stalemate that would eventually define the DMZ as it is today.  North Korea, ideologically speaking, in the old days anyway, was another Communist country.  On paper, I suppose, both are still Communist, though I think neither really has much to do with practical Communism anymore.  In China, Communism started its decline when Deng Xiaoping declared that "to get rich is glorious."  You can't actually be rich if you're living in a Communist state.  I'm less clear when North Korea transitioned from a Communist state to it's current status as a cult-of-personality dictator built entirely around an almost religious fanaticism for Kim Jong Il (Or his father, Kim Il Sung, before him). 

So, what's in it for China today?  That's what I keep asking myself.  The modern post-Cold War geopolitical landscape sees a single superpower (the US) with maybe three in development (EU, Russia, China).  China is no longer a Communist country, by ideology, and it seems to me they've adopted a statist, state capitalist, dictatorship-- something not entirely unlike the facist regimes before World War II.  It remains to be seen whether state capitalism is a sustainable system, or if the Chinese government can maintain its stranglehold on liberty as their populace develops wealth... But the overriding theme in Chinese decision-making seems pointed at economic and technological development.  Given that, I can't really understand why they remain committed to the continued existence of North Korea.  I understand that North Korea creates a buffer between China and South Korea, a state with a sizable American military presence and a powerful military of its own.  I understand that there are still some ideological and historical reasons for China's continued support of North Korea (not least of which should be their characterization of the Korean War as a war to repel American aggression in China)...

But on the other hand, I have to think there's a lot of upside in it for China if the Koreas were to be unified under "southern" rule.  North Korea would quickly become a growth market opportunity for any investor interested in exploting what should be rapid development of North Koreans (see East German example).  It should create positive economic growth right on China's doorstep, and one that China could participate in if they played their cards right.  I think at some point, that calculation should outweigh the geopolitical benefits of a troublesome ally (who very notably has a negative economic impact on the region) standing between you an American influence.  I hope some portions of the Chinese government are beginning to think so, as I think that's the only long-term peaceful resolution to the divide on the Korean Peninsula.